[AAACE-NLA] what is the question

[George demetrion]

Colleagues,

Let's say I want to explore the operating premises of the New Literacy Studies as identified by David Barton, Brian Street, Sylvia Scribner (sort of a precursor), and Juliet Merrifield.  The short definition focuses on the ways in which "literacy practices" are entwined in the ways in which adults draw on print-based texts (however defined) in relation to various tasks and projects that are of interest to them whether the "domain" is the home, the market, the workplace, the community, the child's school, or the local church.  The object here is to obtain the needed information to achieve what one is setting to accomplish.  Literacy, from this vantagepoint is viewed as a metaphor for knowledge acquisition and meaning making, in which the reading of print-based texts typically is (or can be) one of the intervening variables that facilitate the learning goals of the individual, or it could be a group.   

A literacy program founded on the premises of the New Literacy Studies, while, obviously, including the teaching of the basic skills of reading and writing, wouldn't be exclusively defined by the methodologies (there we go again) of what might be viewed as pure reading instruction (whatever that may mean).  It would include some type of prompt (whether through codes, direct text, photos, audio-or video tapes, field trips, etc), that has some correlation to the overall objective at hand (preparing for a meeting with one's child's school teacher).  In a literacy program for low-reading level adults specific practice in learning how to read and write would also be included.  Depending on the type of program and objective of the students, the reading and writing component may be central, may be balanced with the more pressing issue of content analysis of the situation under examination, or under certain (rare) circumstances incidental.

Given this, what if the question I want to explore is the nature of the relationship between learning how to read and write and mastery of critical issues of concern to students in the various life domains, say the EFF role maps, so that we can draw on a commonly known example?  What if also in my probing I don't view learning to read and domain-based knowledge mastery for beginning level readers as an either/or proposition, but, using the language of pragmatic philosopher Nicholas Rescher I am seeking a "duly-hedged synthesis.  The goal might be, to use the language of EFF, to "strengthen and express a sense of self that reflects personal history, values, beliefs, and roles in the larger community."  Say that I am a 25 male African American high school drop-out who has entered a GED program who seeks to become a full time manager at Burger King.  Say the learning task is that of students exploring the sources of their motivation in whatever career paths they are thinking about.  This student, say, still has basic problems with writing, reading vocabulary, and with comprehension beyond the literal level even as he has substantial knowledge about the dynamics of his own personal thinking process and of many of the environmental contexts that he is and will be confronting in the seeking of his goal.

The question becomes, how do I as a program manager construct a viable instructional plan with and for my teachers who are working with this student and others (including the 78 year old grandmother who is going back to school because "it's her time in life to do something for herself") who have various reasons for getting their GED connected to the various domains identified in the EFF project and other areas?  To what extent do I focus on directly mastering the five content areas through continuous work with the GED books, and to what extent do I broaden the instruction, including even bringing in a Burger King regional manager to talk about career options at BK?  Et Cetera.

In short, how do I go about establishing a duly-hedged synthesis between mastering the basic skills of the text and broadening the instructional plan to include areas that student will want to more effectively engage after they obtain their GED, or after, say, they learn to read at the 5-th grade reading level as determined by readability formulas, to complicate our discussion just a bit?   

Specifically, in what ways will research help to inform the making of a sound decision.  

1. Will I wait for an experimental design that complexly factor in all the variables over a significant enough sample that will be sufficiently reliable so that I can apply the findings to my situation, knowing that my decision is "research-based?"

2.  Given the practical impossibility of that will I rely instead on a quasi-experimental sample that factor in at least many of the variables similar to my situation?

3. As a seasoned practitioner, will I place more faith in my own wisdom and examine in depth a few highly-descriptive ethnographic studies even with considerable differences "speak" sufficiently to my own situation based on my imaginative and critical capacity in utilizing the texts to make my own reasoned inferences?

4. Will I seek out other practitioners in the formation of a teacher-research design in which, over a period of time we engage in what Cochran-Smith and Lytle (Inside/Outside) refer to a continuous oral inquiry investigation of our mutual classrooms?

In the field of adult literacy there are many provocative issues to explore at various micro and macro levels.  There is nothing intrinsic about the size of a study or even its scope which makes it a better research project than another.  What is critical, in my view is the importance of the problem identified (including intensive explorations of even single learner's learning history that would have much applicability to the learning history of other students, even if, to use the sanitizing language of positivism, the individual case study is not replicable) and in the nature of the set up of that problem.  

We learn a lot about wars by studying individual wars and examining causation and effect as well as even individual battles in detail, perhaps more so than wars in general or through a macro study that would encompass all wars, in which it would be difficult to have more than a survey.  In studying three or four wars over a period of time, even if the factors in each are not replicable, we learn a great deal.  We learn a great deal particularly both in teasing out the various factors involved as well as through a critical narratively-based analysis  of similarities and differences.  Quantitative information would be factored in, in, typically, its subordinate function of supplying additional information to the case at hand based on the question under investigation. So it is with adult literacy if we have the collective wherewithal to make it so--a provocative field of sustained investigation in the willingness to probe the interstices of the critically-informed imagination in the connection to a wide array of problems that are both interesting and important.

Final two questions:

1.  Who owns the field of adult literacy research?
2. Who should?

George Demetrion
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