[AAACE-NLA] call for study participants
S. Lawrence
shirleyfaith at frontiernet.net
Fri Jul 11 12:21:43 EDT 2008
Robin in regards to your study, where is the word document? I am also
interested in your study but need definitions of "scholar" and "poor and
working class"
Thanks
Shirley Lawrence, MS
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robin Wright" <robin.wright at utsa.edu>
To: "National Literacy Advocacy List sponsored by AAACE"
<aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 12:08 PM
Subject: [AAACE-NLA] call for study participants
Dear Colleagues,
My name is Robin Redmon Wright and I'm an Assistant Professor of Adult
Learning and Teaching at the University of Texas at San Antonio. I am
investigating the experiences of those rare scholars who grew up either poor
or working-class. Several studies have been done on the experiences of
working-class scholars within academia, but I would like to explore further
to find what factors, influences, and elements in those scholars' personal
histories and stories led them to enter the foreign terrain of the ivory
tower. All information will, of course, be kept completely confidential.
If you are a scholar from a poor or working-class background and would be
willing to be interviewed either in person or over the telephone, please
contact me at robin.wright at utsa.edu <mailto:robin.wright at utsa.edu> . Thank
you in advance for your willingness to participate.
I am also attaching this call as a word document. Please forward to
colleagues and other academic listservs as you see fit. I appreciate your
help!
Robin
It's never too late to be what you might have been.
--George Eliot
Robin Redmon Wright, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Adult Learning & Teaching
Co-Director of the Adult Learning and Teaching Graduate Program
The University of Texas at San Antonio
College of Education and Human Development
Department of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching
One UTSA Circle
San Antonio, Texas 78249
(210) 458-5640
Fax: (210) 458-7281
________________________________
From: aaace-nla-bounces at lists.literacytent.org on behalf of Sally Gabb
Sent: Thu 7/10/2008 8:47 AM
To: National Literacy Advocacy List sponsored by AAACE; dwyoho at earthlink.net
Subject: Re: [AAACE-NLA] Professional Wisdom
Have been lurking in on this discussion for a while - one problem I find
with this discussion is the 'all or nothing' approach to self esteem. >From
my personal and professional experience (30 years in ABE) I find that human
beings have self confidence in some areas but not in others. An ABE
student may demonstrate 'low self esteem' about academic work, but have much
higher self esteem about her/his ability to work, to parent, to organize,
etc. A problem that can occur with research, in my estimation, is the
question itself: a narrow question will evoke narrow/incomplete answers -
if the question is not appropriate, the 'evidence' may be skewed.
Certainly I have experienced many many students who have low self esteem
about themselves as academic learners, but when provided an opportunity will
evidence clear confidence in other abilities. Enabling students to identify
strengths/ areas of self confidence doesn't ignore the reasons that students
come to us; rather this approach enables the student to begin the learning
process from a position of confidence. I would be interested in research
that posed more complex hypotheses: when encouraged to identify areas of
self confidence and strength, are adult learners better able to handle the
frustration/challenges of academic learning?
To return to the question of 'professional wisdom' and classroom/ teacher
inquiring research, I have found that keeping case study journals detailing
specific students and their confidence/lack of in various venues can provide
an important basis for professional dialogue and a platform for formal
research. What do others think?
Sally Gabb, Reading Specialist, Bristol Community College, Fall River MA
________________________________
> Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:20:36 -0400
> To: dwyoho at earthlink.net; aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org
> From: hbeder at rci.rutgers.edu
> Subject: Re: [AAACE-NLA] Professional Wisdom
>
> True, some learners have low self-esteem and some do not, but isn't
> that true for all of us? The problem becomes when we believe that
> ALL learners have low self esteem because they have lived chaotic
> lives of failure in the past. You are right, research rarely proves
> anything. Ana's work on self-esteem did not prove anything...but it
> was sound evidence. So what would a group of professionally wise
> teachers do when confronted with Ana's evidence? They might examine
> it for strengths and weaknesses. They might reflect on it ,and when
> they did they would conclude
> that that the research raises at least the possibility that their
> beliefs were wrong. Then they might search for more evidence. They
> might replicate Ana's study with their own learners [that wouldn't be
> hard to do]. They might look at other research, and they would find
> that, while there is evidence that successful completion of adult
> literacy raises self-esteem, there is nothing substantial that
> indicates adult learners have lower than normal self-esteem to begin
> with. Then they might alter their practice based on a new assumption
> that learners don't have low self-esteem and see what happens...and so on.
>
> What would a group of teachers who are not professionally wise
> do? They might say UGGH!, that's research. Let's go home.
>
>
> At 04:25 PM 6/25/2008, you wrote:
>
> >I was about to add to Susan's and Hal Beder's comments when I
> >realized something. Both Susan and Hal talked about the problem of
> >teachers/tutors perceiving something as true, like the prevalence of
> >poor learner self esteem, when in fact the premise may not be
> >true. I was about to chime in my agreement, and mention my own
> >action research on self-esteem (which came to the same conclusion),
> >when I began to ponder the way so many things become true simply
> >because enough people say it is so, or perhaps because of WHO says
> >it is so. Over and over again this happens in our field. Some would
> >decide, for example, that if Hal, Susan and I all agree that the
> >idea of adult learners "suffering" from low self esteem is a myth,
> >then it must be true that the idea is, indeed, a myth, because three
> >people said so (and these are three people who we assume know what
> >they are talking about.) Yet in practice, what I find is that the
> >presence of low self-esteem in adult learners is sometimes true, and
> >sometimes not.
> >
> >As a practitioner, this is the problem I have with
> >researchers. Always they are looking for the most good for the
> >most people. This is reasonable, and research of all kinds is
> >important and useful to practitioners. But research in education,
> >no matter how well done, can't be trusted to provide the best
> >answers consistently when working in the classroom, especially if
> >you work with learners individually, and I believe, especially with
> >ADULTS. I believe research in our field can inform and guide
> >practice, but when research becomes the basis for a MANDATE on how
> >to teach, I start to turn red.
> >
> >When I read about research in the medical field. there are always
> >caveats that conclusions are tentative. But I rarely hear education
> >researchers underscore that their conclusions are by nature based on
> >a certain set of conditions that may not be consistently
> >replicable. It is true, I think, that an actual research report in
> >education almost always calls for yet more research and always puts
> >limits on the application of the conclusions, But with the
> >exceptions of John Comings and Tom Sticht, who I know respect
> >practitioners, where are the researchers when policy-makers grab a
> >hold of conclusions and proceed to ram them down our throats by
> >connecting them to funding and demanding inflexible program designs?
> >
> >The picture provided by David and John in this discussion where
> >researchers and practictioners work side by side as equals is
> >exactly what we need. Soon the
> >WIA will be reauthorized. The first concensus I would like to see
> >among adult ed practitioners and researchers is a sound, published
> >critique of what the WIA has done, and has not done, since 1998, and
> >a statement that research in education should inform practice, not
> >dictate it.
> >
> >Some empirical scientists have stated that the job of the researcher
> >is to find the truth, and that's all. What others do with it is not
> >their problem. We can't allow this in education. The idea of
> >capturing professional wisdom as John Comings has proposed badly
> >needs support.
> >
> >Deborah W. Yoho
> >director, Turning Pages
> >(formerly the Greater Columbia Literacy Council)
> >a community service of Volunteers of America Carolinas
> >803-765-2555 Fax: 803-779-1657
> >PO Box 1447 Columbia, SC 29202
> ><mailto:yohogclc at earthlink.net>yohogclc at earthlink.net
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
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> >http://lists.literacytent.org/mailman/listinfo/aaace-nla
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>
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> Graduate School of Education
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> New Brunswick, NJ 08901
> 732-932-7496 ext. 8213
>
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