[AAACE-NLA] Boomerang Brings Deja Vu

[George demetrion]

Tom and others,

>From a practical point oif view if the three perspectives mutually inform 
each other I could see how that could be quite useful.  I made a stab, but 
only a stab at it in the Canadian Journal essay Discerning the Contexts.  In 
terms of theoretical constructs I think the issue of philosophical, 
pedagogical, and political presuppositions would need to be carefully teased 
out including the historical trajectory of how such models have become 
appropriated in various policy, academic and practitioner-based discourse 
over the past half-century with roots going back over a century as you point 
out.

At this time I don't really have a great deal invested in this argument, 
though in Connflicting Paradigms and Discerning the Contexts I sought to 
make a mediating case for the New Literacy Studies in a manner that 
incorporates FCL and critical pedagogy.  I am assuming the advocates of 
critical pedagogy could argue similarly.

Whether there is a resolution to this, what would be of more interest to me 
is the quality of analysis that would ensue from such critical exploration 
and the quality of practice that, one hopes, would also follow.

Notwithstanding some very notable work, including your own, the field of 
adult literacy studies as a theoretical and research-based level remains 
quite underdeveloped.  My sense (as a practitioner and a scholar) is that 
the field of practice (practitioner wisdom) is probably more well developed, 
but suffers, nonetheless as a result of a limited theoretical and research 
base.

There's much potential here, but a great deal of creative imagination and a 
great deal more of probing intrerdiscipined work is still warranted to bring 
out something of the fuller promise of our very emergent and very young 
field.

George Demetrion


From: tsticht at znet.com
Reply-To: National Literacy Advocacy List sponsored by 
AAACE<aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org>
To: National Literacy Advocacy List sponsored by 
AAACE<aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org>
Subject: Re: [AAACE-NLA] Boomerang Brings Deja Vu
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 10:12:33 -0700

George: Interestingly, and probably not surprisingly, I have tended to place
Functional Context Education as the broader conceptually and empirically
based framework, and I have subsumed Paulo's work as part of the historical
sequence in the professional wisdom development of FCE from the Freedman's
Schools after the Civil War up to Paulo's work (see the second FCE notebook
below)

FCE is more broadly based since in Cast-off Youth we reviewed eight major
studies in the military on how to redesign vocational, job training courses
to accommdate lower literacy personnel. In fact, the phrase, Functional
Context Method was coined by Harry Shoemaker in 1960 to describe his work
on electronics training for the U. S. Army. I enlarged the term to
Functional Context Education to incorporate basic skills education into the
framework. By the way, Shoemaker went on to be a Diector of Training for the
old Bell Telephone company.

The first FCE notebook cited below also contains chapters integrating the
new literacies (multiliteracies), social basis of cognition, and the human
cogntive system development into the FCE framework. The FCE principles seem
to work across a range of educational contexts and they have more empirical
as well as professional wisdom supporting them than any other framework
thay I have sound.

A good reading of the Cast-off Youth book and the two FCE notebooks will
provide a solid understanding of FCE principles, theories of cognitive
development, theory of literacy as graphics technology, and case studies
applying FCE to integrated vocational, parenting, health and family
literacy programs.

Thanks for your comments!

Tom Sticht

FCE Resources online:

Functional Context Education: Making Learning Relevant (1997 edition).
Eight chapters including The Power of Adult Literacy Education, Some
Challenges of Diversity for Adult Literacy Education, Views On Contemporary
Cognitive Science, Introduction to Functional Context Education, Functional
Context Education and Literacy Instruction, and four case studies in
applying Functional Context Education to the design of programs that
integrate (or embed, contextualize) basic skills and vocational or
parenting education (workplace literacy, family literacy).
http://www.nald.ca/library/research/context/context.pdf

Functional Context Education: Making Learning Relevant in the 21st Century
(2005
edition).
Functional Context Education (FCE) materials available online in several
nations, the Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALL) survey, National Adult
Assessment of Literacy (NAAL) survey, FCE in historical perspective,
(1860-Present) including Paulo Freire and Learner Centered, Participatory
Literacy Education. Methodologies used in adult literacy research for
determining what is relevant to youth and adult learners; five case studies
illustrating the application of FCE in parenting, vocational training, and
health literacy.
http://www.nald.ca/library/research/fce/FCE.pdf