[NLA] Evidence-based practice in Adult Literacy Education]

[George E. Demetrion]

On Mon, 8 Apr 2002 09:43:08 EDT AWilder106 at aol.com writes:

>Do any of these studies say what actually happens in the classroom?  
>READING IS CENTRAL.  It's why we are all here!!!  I think if we can't
figure 
>out the>best methods to use in teaching adults to read and write, we had
best 
>be in another business.   Methods have to be described, validated,
measured, 
>and shown to be reliable!!!  This should be the center of our
discussion!!!  Do we have studies which test out methods?  Do we have
teachers, or organizations who have done their own research?
Andrea:

Let me comment on this and on some other points you make. 

 To respond directly to your question, the answer is not much.  In
Fingeret and Danin's They Really Put a Hurtin on My Brain, there is some,
though of a more illustrative than systematic nature.  While I was away
from my program in Hartford,  one of my colleagues completed a
dissertation on a few students in a single program with at least one
chapter focused directly on teaching methodology. There may be other
dissertations that take at a finely-grained look at reading methodology,
though I haven't seen this work.   Rachel Martin in her new book
Listening Up:  Reinventing Ourselves as Teachers and Students brings in
some specific class material on writing.  In my ABE article Motivation
and the Adult New  Reader I bring in a bit, though I'm mostly looking at
long range impact.  In short its safe to say that the research on
ABE/adult literacy classroom studies focusing on reading methodology is
limited. 

With you, I would agree that additional research of this type would be
useful, even critical, potentially both  to practitioners and for the
broader purpose of building up the knowledge base of the field. With you
I agree that reading is important.  With you I would agree that science
can add important insight to our understanding of the reading process. 
Also with you I would agree that there is a lot of rummaging around among
scientists in search of problem resolution.

But I want to make some additional points:

a)  Literacy is broader than reading, but expands to the universe of
learning and learning has short, intermediate, and long-range
implications which is possible to discern, though imperfectly and not
without contestation, through intensive, longitudinal, case study
analysis. Thus impact studies are important to get at the "so what" of
adult literacy programs.  The studies that I had mentioned in the
previous message get at some of this.  Other literature could be cited. 
While additional, more finely-grained work on impact is needed, it is
also important to build on the research base that we do have rather than
to assume that we have to start fresh.  When you say in one of your
posts, find the studies and critique them, though these works focus more
on impact than classroom methodology, these are among the studies that
have do exist and warrant additional discussion.  I won't elaborate
further on this point here except to suggest that a close analysis of
impact (short, intermediate, and long range) is at least  as important 
as finely-grained analysis of classroom methodology. 

So let's pause for a moment  at this point.  While reading is important
it is not always central; from a strictly pedagogical perspective,
learning is, the learning that matters as defined by students themselves;
and as the impact studies illustrate, this learning is multi-fold.  Also,
reading needs to be viewed for its symbolic as well as more literal
significance; the effort of participation itself as a meaning-making
process should be factored in  as well as  the subtle impacts such
meaning may take in the lives of individuals. The extent and range of
such  impact  warrants further investigation.  The research of Merrifield
and others stemming from what she refers to as the New Literacy Studies,
views literacy as an intervening factor; one factor among others in
effecting life change.  There's a lot of subtle work that goes on here,
which won't do by reducing literacy to reading.  This is not to dismiss
the importance of reading, but to put it into perspective.  Let's not
reduce literacy to reading.  I would view that as a mistake.

b  No single set of methodologies are likely to work with every student. 
Students range widely in terms of initial educational background, reading
level on entering the program, rates of progress regardless as to
methodology, motivation, interest areas, needs, etc  For some, content is
critical, for others, they just want to work on reading, and the reasons
for this are varied. The range of individuals who participate in adult
literacy programs is quite broad.  There's unlikely to be any single set
of methodologies that are going to be applicable across the board.  As a
working hypothesis and frame of reference we could do a lot worse than
draw from Purcell-Gates' balanced theory which contains the following
presuppositions:

1.  Learners need both to focus on meaning with real, authentic texts and
to work on skills.

2.   Students learn through reciprocal influence of different aspects of
the language process, from letter and sound recognition knowledge to
semantic knowledge about the reading matter.

3.   Readers process all the different letters or words but they also
draw on meaning and syntax, which influence perception and recognition of
letters and sounds.

4.   Comprehension is the only purpose for reading, the  more
skills-oriented of those adhering to a balanced perspective will not
hesitate to teach isolated skills as well as involving their students in
reading and writing of authentic and compelling texts.

5.   The more wholistic-minded of those advocating a balanced approach
maintain that skills are best developed within a context of authentic and
compelling reading and writing.

6.  The balanced approach is referred to as a-whole-part--whole- approach
to instruction.  Students engage in meaningful reading, then the teacher
pulls out certain skills, which range from decoding, to an analysis of
the type of text, to comprehension, for more focused work.

Finely-grained research might then build from these premises, which would
add a lot of refinement and nuance to adult literacy reading methodology.
 But I wouldn't want to see this in isolation.  To have significance,
research on reading methodology would need to be juxtaposed to the
various backgrounds of students; distinctions would have to be made
between concrete and symbolic application of reading methodology, all of
which would need to be connected to short, intermediate, and long-term
impact.  All this and much more, would need to be sifted through the
broader public and policy discourses which give context how to adult
literacy education is viewed in the body politic.

Thus, I wouldn't be too dismissive of Peter Kondrat's point on the
illusive impact of the teacher in stimulating the learning/teaching
moment. In our shop, the most fundamental work goes into building
learning communities as the broad environmental matrix that provides the
underlying support (scaffolding) for the work.  This is not to dismiss
the importance of teacher/tutor competency, though it is to suggest that
relevant skills are variable, and capacity to relate, along with
consistency, are at least as important as good methodology and wise
selection of instructional materials (not that there's agreement on what
these are, but that's another matter for another day). Ideally, all of
these need to be factored in, though the old adage that teaching is at
least as much of an art as it is a science, rings a little more than true
these days, which I hope our current OERI doesn't condescendingly dismiss
as folklore.

c)  Final point.  No one that I've heard on this list dismisses science.
The concern rather is the narrowness of what  the current USDoE views as
legitimate research and their dismissal of educational scholarship as
having legitimacy in its own right.  It's hard not to view the very
strong emphasis being placed on "right" methodology as a gate keeping
function that has the result of dismissing 100 years of progressive
educational, largely on the grounds of rhetoric (i.e., politics).  Though
that may not be the intention of the scientists, the utilization of a
certain limited form of scholarship to define what is right education by
the politicians, is something to be concerned about.  That is the issue,
not science per se.  

It's interesting, also, that political conservatives who, for years, have
expressed concern about big government, are now using big government to
instill their ideology into every fabric of American life.  One might
view the use of science here as a hidden curriculum that has very
specific political intent. *That* science needs to be distinguished from
the realm of pure scholarship, which also does not have the right to
claim hegemony over what is defined as valid education (a concept that is
contestable all the way down), but needs to take its seat as one
discipline among others as offering *one* angle of vision through which
to move our collective understanding forward.

I want to acknowledge your important role in this discussion as the
gadfly, and I mean that in the most complementary of terms.  You sting
and prick and fly off to something else and that is very valuable.  Yet,
what you are saying (as well as I) merits further scrutiny and cannot
stand alone.

Let us continue.

George Demetrion
Sophocles 5 at juno.com



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