[NLA] participation and resistance

[Art LaChance]

Eileen,
I think your statement quoted below is absolutely true.

"Through exploration and experience of very different practices (what Mezirow
calls disconfirming
experiences), through dialogue and sometimes confrontation with people with
different perspectives, and through honest reflection on our own biases and
assumptions and the origins and reasons for them, I think it is possible to
construct "better" ways of teaching and learning--mindful practice."

Lightening up on our own biases and self-induced limitations is the key to
"learning", isn't it.?

Art


Eileen Eckert wrote:

> Art and others,
> Art said, "Whether we realize it or not, we emulate the education
> 'processes' we received, and we attempt to utilize them on our students in
> like style, that's why I see K12 as self-perpetuating."
>
> I agree and I disagree. Some of the education processes we absorb
> unconsciously, and they seep into our practice without our even knowing.
> <But,> I don't think this is total or inevitable. Through exploration and
> experience of very different practices (what Mezirow calls disconfirming
> experiences), through dialogue and sometimes confrontation with people with
> different perspectives, and through honest reflection on our own biases and
> assumptions and the origins and reasons for them, I think it is possible to
> construct "better" ways of teaching and learning--mindful practice. If we
> are doomed to re-create our own experiences, what's the point of learning or
> education? But, I also think that those of us who are most likely to
> reproduce the K-12 system without questioning it are not likely to initiate
> reflection and transformation without some trigger. That's one reason it's
> so important to have the experiences of those who have not been well-served
> by K-12 represented, and why we all lose out when research and policy are
> dominated by people who have been too long out of contact with the
> population served by the adult and family literacy system. Not that it's the
> job of those who haven't been well-served by K-12 to trigger everyone else's
> learning, but realistically, they are the ones most likely--through their
> sense of betrayal by "the system"--to not just let it slide. I think our
> notions of "safe" learning environments for students, and of "safe" working
> environments for teachers and administrators, are still too simplistic.
> Safety can protect us from change, even when learners (and "resisters") need
> us to change.
>
> Responses to your other points later. About the participants in Ziegahn's
> and Quigley's research. From Ziegahn (1992): "Several layers of 'snowball'
> sampling (Bogdan & Biklen, 1982; Patton, 1990) occurred concurrently:
> community informats suggested either adults with low literacy skills who
> might be willing to talk with me or other informed community members who
> might have knowledge of such respondents. As the study progressed,
> low-literate respondents themselves suggested friends and relatives who also
> had difficulty with reading and writing as potential respondents"(p. 36). I
> think the other article is based on the same sample, but I can't tell for
> sure.
>
> >From Quigley (1992): "ABE participants were asked to approach undereducated
> adults whom they knew refused to attend such programs and ask them to either
> call the interviewers or to gain the resisters' consent for the interviewers
> to contact them. Twenty such resisters voluntarily came forward to tell
> their stories" (p. 108).
>
> >From the abstract of Quigely (1990): "Nonparticipation in literacy/ABE is a
> critical issue that can be illuminated by reproduction and resistance
> theory, This study attempts to do this by first analyzing the resistance to
> schooling of characters in ten works of literary fiction, then applying
> these findings to traditional literacy/ABE programs to determine if these
> 'second chance' programs discourage the participation of some adults"
> (p.103).
>
> I have mixed feelings about using fiction to theorize about real people, but
> hey, I'm just reporting the studies here--you decide whether they're worth
> anything.
> Eileen
>

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