[NLA] professionalization, resisters, and complex agendas

Fri Aug 9 10:17:59 EDT 2002

If I understand your position, Andres, it is that professionalization should 
be equated with both adequate compensation and with a commitment to ongoing 
development of expertise. I agree with that. But how do we get there? And 
what does it have to do with achieving higher levels of literacy, education, 
and the associated benefits for eligible adults and by extension for the 
nation? I'm not saying there's no relationship; I just don't think the 
relationship is as simple or direct as the expected one of "professional 
teaching cadre" --> "better services" --> "higher levels of literacy" --> 
all sorts of political, economic, and social benefits thought to be 
associated with literacy.

Research into implicit learning shows that when relationships are direct, 
learning is likely to be explicit and knowledge verbalizable; however, when 
relationships are indirect and complex, learning is more likely to be 
implicit and to result in tacit knowledge. We can act on it, but we can't 
articulate it. But because we can't articulate it, it's harder to tell 
whether we're acting on accurate tacit knowledge or inaccurate conclusions 
and unchallenged assumptions. The relationships among professionalization, 
compensation, teacher effectiveness, learner participation and outcomes, and 
benefits to individuals and society are so complex, and so much of the 
evidence is missing or hard to interpret, that there's a lot of room for 
inaccuracies and miscommunication. I don't know where to begin, so I'm just 
going to pull out a couple of threads that seem relevant to me.

How do we get to the adequate compensation (for those who want to be 
full-time rather than volunteers)? The two routes I know of that have been 
taken are to develop credentials or certification, or to make adult and 
family literacy part of the higher ed (community and technical college) 
system. The certification route means some kind of standardization or at 
least codifcation of "good teaching," which as far as I can tell, is not 
usually going to leave much room for development of "organic intellectuals." 
Okay, that's a much longer discussion and my statement is full of 
assumptions about the domesticating properties of certification systems. 
Certainly, though, as the NIFL State Policy Update, "The Professionalization 
of Adult Education: Can State Certification of Adult Educators Contribute to 
a More Professional Workforce?", states, "[T]here has been no research 
indicating that professionalism leads to the intended outcomes" (p. 2). 
While Arkansas has had adult ed. teacher certification since 1966, and until 
recently had 66% full-time teachers, which lends some support to the 
professionalizing influence of certification, I haven't found any evidence 
that teacher certification has raised the level of compensation for adult 
ed. teachers overall. (And there's also no research on whether or how 
certification affects learner outcomes.) In states where adult and family 
literacy is part of the community college system, my impression (based on 
limited knowledge) is that the few full-time teachers are adequately 
compensated compared to the field as a whole, but their workload is higher 
than that of their colleagues in transfer and professional-technical 
divisions of the colleges, and the few full-timers are vastly outnumbered by 
part-timers who get an adequate hourly wage (usually) but no compensation 
for prep-time or grading and few or no benefits.

What do we have to do to get to adequate compensation? The argument often is 
that we have to prove ourselves to the legislature, taxpayers, and other 
non-student "stakeholders" in order to make our case for adequate 
compensation--gain legitimacy in the eyes of the public. This involves 
development of standards based on what's easily seen and measured and what's 
important to those non-student stakeholders. I'd argue that what makes a 
difference to potential learners who end up being resisters is <not> the 
same as what matters to the other stakeholders. In order to serve 
"resisters," I believe that what we do to be seen as "legitimate" in the 
eyes of the other stakeholders is a drawback. We need to be different from 
the "experts" who didn't meet their needs. How do we reconcile the need to 
provide opportunities for authentic learning experiences that matter to 
adults with the effort to gain legitimacy in the eyes of those who allocate 
the budgets?

Where do the efforts to professionalize and to improve lteracy efforts and 
outcomes complement each other and where do they conflict with each other? 
How do efforts to professionalize the field affect "resisters" and 
participants?
Eileen

>From: "Andres Muro" <AndresM at epcc.edu>
>Reply-To: nla at lists.literacytent.org
>To: <eileeneckert at hotmail.com>, <nla at lists.literacytent.org>
>Subject: Re: [NLA] participation and resistance
>Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2002 12:31:26 -0600
>
>Eileen, Art, et al:
>
>The question of professionalism and mainstreaming is something that 
>interests me very much. I don't think that these two things are necessarily 
>related.
>
>I have always been an advocate for the professionalization of adult 
>literacy and have been very heavily criticized for my stance. People relate 
>the idea of professionalization of adult literacy with k-12 as a good 
>argument against professionalization.
>
>To me, professionalization does not have anything to do with mainstreaming. 
>Professionals, to me, are people that devote a significant amount of time 
>to a job and get adequately compensated for this. At the same time, they 
>have a responsibility to study, learn, conduct research and increase their 
>knowledge of their field. As people become more knowledgeable of their 
>field, they become independent thinkers and they choose what paradigms they 
>may want to subscribe to, what approaches, strategies and ideologies they 
>may want to embrace and what efforts they may want to engage in to change 
>the nature of their fields. In Gramcian terms, they become organic 
>intellectuals. It is up to them to become organic intellectuals for the 
>mainstream, or for other streams.
>
>To me, k-12 teachers are mainstreamed for sure. However, they are hardly 
>professionals or organic intellectuals. Instead they are technicians. 
>Intellectual growth, independence, and creative thinking are not something 
>encouraged of teachers. While I am sure that there are a few teachers that 
>devote time to grow professionally, it is not the general rule. This is 
>because teachers are not part of an intellectual tradition.
>
>Of course, some teachers would argue that they are encouraged to and study 
>strategies and ways to improve on their practice. In other words, they 
>study how to teach the curriculum better, how to manage the students and 
>the classroom, etc. However, they study how to do their jobs better, but 
>not the why of their jobs. I am talking about questions such as why was 
>this curriculum selected? why are we doing SCANS? who decided that we 
>should teach job skills instead of health? who came up with WIA or NRA? why 
>do the EFF people talk about functioning instead of participating? what is 
>the difference between functional literacy and participatory literacy? who 
>benefits from the curriculum that we are using?
>
>An intellectual teacher, according to Giroux, researches these questions 
>and when they find answers, they are forced to take a stance. A teacher 
>may, for example, work for a workforce development literacy program. If the 
>teacher would research the data, he would learn that these type of programs 
>do not benefit the students in the long run, but they only benefit the 
>corporations. Once they figure that out, they are forced to take a 
>position, since they are aware of  the specific outcome of their work.
>
>Andres
>
> >>> eileeneckert at hotmail.com 08/08/02 07:28AM >>>
>Art wrote: ...we in adult lit are at a loss in
>terms of how do we deal with the potential student's philosophy that we, as
>part of an 'educational' opportunity for them, will force 'values' that 
>they
>haven't 'chosen'.
>
>Thinking "out loud" here...When we identify with K-12, when we value
>"professionalization," how much do we align ourselves with the
>powers-that-be and by implication with the value of joining the 
>"mainstream"
>ourselves and of "helping" literacy learners to become part of the
>mainstream? Do we give up the ability, or even the potential, to critique 
>or
>even change that mainstream by positioning ourselves inside it?
>
>And if we see our relationship with learners as helping them to "get"
>something, namely literacy skills, that we have and they don't, then is it
>implicit that we will also help them "get" the values they "need" (by our
>definition, and our definition must be right because we're the educators 
>and
>we've already "got it")?
>
>If our relationship with learners is one of mutual benefit, what do
>educators get from learners? Can learners immediately see their value to
>program volunteers and staff? Or do they feel like objects of literacy
>educators' efforts instead of co-subjects? Are we as willing to be changed
>by our contact with learners as we want them to be by their encounters with
>us?
>
>Eileen
>
>
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