[NLA] field research--work in progress

[George E. Demetrion]

(I sent my message to Senator Dodd (CT) this morning, so I write with a
free conscience)

Colleagues:

This discussion on research is getting interesting.  Critical issues are
being raised from various quarters.  More power to the field for being
able and willing to discuss these matters in an open, public, and at
times, highly contentious format.

As I have in the past, at some future point, I'd like to contribute
something of a conceptual nature to this discussion on research/scholarly
traditions.  At this time I'd like to share a bit of a work in progress,
an extended essay I wrote in 1994 (in the ERIC data system, but never
published) that I am now substantially revising.  It's titled Motivation
and the Adult New Reader:  Becoming Literate at the Bob Steele Reading
Center.  In about a month, I expect to place it on the NALD data base
that Tom had referenced.

The following is one of about 10 case presentations of student learning
histories in the program I operated a decade ago in Hartford.  The focus
of this particular presentation is on implicit goals and aspirations. 
Featured prominently in what follows is the importance of emergence and
potentiality, themes that Catherine has mentioned.

In drawing on case study research and the ethnographic research tradition
(among other perspectives) I seek to walk a fine line between what might
be construed as solipsist nominalism and the positivistic quest for valid
generalizations that can be broadly applied across the board, so to
speak.. In case study description, we are not seeking generalizations per
se, but depth, richness, insight, that, while applying to the singular
individual of the study, has some applicability beyond the singular case.
 Thus in my study, by bringing in material on perhaps 50 students, I am
seeking to say something, while pertaining to the particular program I
studied/operated, has some decent applicability beyond the specific group
it studied.

One way of moving forward on qualitative research is to engage in
something that has not yet (as far as I'm aware) been taken on, a
comparative critical study of the existing (or at least key) qualitative
studies on adult literacy education.  In a recent NCSALL publication, Hal
Beder analyzed 29 studies that were based on quantitative, what he refers
to as "objective" data.  That's an important study.  A similar study of
the qualitative tradition would, I assume, yield much valuable
information, that would still, of course, begs for further analysis. 
Just like life, research is a continuous process and no singular work or
tradition is going to prove conclusive.  In this respect, research is not
an end (as if the researchers have the ultimate wisdom here), but simply
represents part of the mix which needs to be factored into the field'
emergent public knowledge base.

Well, it's Saturday night and I have a date, so let me stop here with
these preliminary remarks.

George demetrion
Sophocles5 at juno.com
_________________________________________________________________

Derrick
           
 Derrick, for example, had specific goals in mind related to his church
life when he entered the program, but new vistas opened up to him as he
engaged the literacy process.  Initially he thought he would improve his
reading and writing skills, which he did accomplish.  What he did not
expect, however, was the experience of learning itself, would open up to
him, which stimulated intense autobiographical reflection and writing. 
Derrick had always possessed an expressive oratory, but through literacy,
he was able to develop his poetic voice in writing as attested in his
essay on Jesse Jackson previously quoted.  Consider also the following
extract from "The Lone Ranger:"

"I feel like I am the Lone Ranger.  Sitting alone without a care and
without a home.  No one to see, no one to talk to, not using my time.  I
feel like I am losing my mind.  Days and nights have gone by so fast, I
do not need my mind to help me to remember how lonely I am.  It pains me
to think of the loneliness I feel inside.  But the pain to my heart has
reach up to my brain (Smith, 1991, p. 93)."

Derrick's heartfelt and provocative essays are interspersed throughout
Welcome To Our World and a special section is devoted to a collection of
his work (pp. 90-98).  The following essay, "Working on My Dreams,"
written early in his career at the Bob Steele Reading Center, provides a
glimpse of the complexity of his thought process in his articulation of
words and images by which to convey the sense of his shifting levels of
motivation in "owning" the process of learning to read:

"It was a rainy night years ago.  I was looking at the walls of my house.
 At that time I was not doing anything. I had an instant thought about
learning how to read better.  But my mind was not in tuned with the
thoughts I had come up with to solve my problem.
 
As the night air became cold and filled my room, my mind was wrestling
with bad thoughts that I could not explain or could not understand.
 
I know you are thinking that I was losing my mind; I was thinking the
same thing.  I was trying to put myself together in one piece.
 
The next thing I knew I had to put myself to sleep.  As I was sleeping, I
was reading a book in my dream.  I was reading like I did not have a
reading problem.  I was reading so well and so good.  I read it from
beginning to end without any problem at all.
 
I had awakened from my dreaming.  I realized that that the dream that I
had was not complete and I must do something about it.  I had given a lot
of thought about my reading problem, then something came to me.  If I
read more and study my words harder, my reading skills will increase.
 
My thoughts sounded solid and clear about what I should do.  I put my
mind, body and soul in my reading and writing. As the days and nights
have gone by, I have experienced constant improvement.  I felt so good
about working hard and long to better myself in reading and writing.
 
Afterward, the wind had died down and the tees had stopped moving from
side to side; I had not lost even one thought about what I wanted to do
about my reading.
 
My mind was clear and my body was strong with all that with me. I was
ready to do the very thing I had dreamed about which was to read anything
without any mistakes (p. 92).

It is not perfectly clear the extent to which Derrick fused creative
fiction into this seemingly factual account.  Assuming there is some of
that, his capacity to blur the genres of different art forms is a
reflection of his artistic appropriation of print literacy with his
emergent autobiographical development, particularly the revelatory nature
of the key motivational shift, where he said (above), "then something
came to me."

  This art form of what might be characterized as "creative faction" 
became the basis through which Derrick conveyed something of process of
how he transformed a far from perfectly formed wish into a strong desire,
the manifestation of which was confirmed throughout his substantial,
multi-year involvement in the Reading Center program.

Through his participation at the Center, Derrick not only developed his
intellectual aptitude, but became an integral member of the Literacy
Volunteers of Greater Hartford community by serving as a student support
leader as well as being a member of the affiliate's board of directors. 
He was also a charter member of the agency's North End Committee, which
developed the agency's presence and credibility with Hartford's
African-American community.    

 Derrick was an exemplary adult learner who drew upon the program's
resources to meet some of his own life ends and to expand undeveloped
talents, which required explicit nurturing for them to become manifest. 
Although not what he originally had in mind, he maximized opportunities
inherent within the Center's social and intellectual climate to fulfill
some of his more deeply rooted, latent aspirations for knowledge,
community, and mission while pursuing literacy education (Matthews,
1993).  Initially, he wanted to develop his skills in order to be a more
effective churchman.  His increased literacy proficiency helped him with
that.  Yet through the process of learning and participating in the life
of the Center, Derrick opened new perceptual vistas that proved at least
as, if not more important to him, than his stated goals.  Moreover, by
defining his calling at the Reading Center as part of his religious
mission, Derrick was able to connect new goals with some of the original
sources of motivation that had initially brought him to the program
(Smith, Ball, Demetrion, and Michelson, 1993, pp. 107-108)

Through his years at the Reading Center, Derrick had written a novel,
peer taught, led student support groups, participated in various
program-wide initiatives, and served on LVGH's Board of Directors.  By
embracing the many dimensions of literacy and experiencing its intrinsic
satisfactions, Derrick expanded his own consciousness and made a vital
contribution to the program.  These were unintended accomplishments that
emerged through his vital participation in the program for over almost a
decade.   As he expressed it:

"You have a variety of ideas to offer.  But it takes education to bring
all this out.  I guess what education has done for me is to bring all
these things out of me.  I may have had it from the beginning, but there
never was an opportune time for it all to be brought out.  I had to wait
until education came into my life and opened these things up to me, to
give me more ways to express myself (p. 108).

Commenting further, Derrick noted that the program was "a big test" for
him. Instead of constraints he experienced possibilities. Even though he
knew there were limits to them, he didn't know what they were.  Rather,
in "seeking to see what"  they were, he was testing his own emergent
capacities. As he put it,  "[i]f I get into something that doesn't work
right, I move on to the next thing.  I don't know what my limits, right
now.  I'm just taking anything I can grab onto and seeing what I can do
with it" (p. 109).

Derrick was able to read with approximately fourth grade reading
proficiency when he entered the program.  He was a high school graduate
and had worked steadily at Pratt and Whitney Aircraft in East Hartford
for over twenty years.  He only discovered" he had a reading problem when
his pastor passed him by in a group Bible reading session after he had
flubbed the reading the first time. Until that time, he had not realized
that he had, what he referred to, as "reading problem."  As one of the
most advanced students I have ever encountered and one also possessed
with a very strong sense of self-direction and artistic creativity,
Derrick's learning career exemplifies something of the outer boundary of
the adult literacy learning experience. 

However, as the following case presentations illustrate, there are many
manifestations of progress at all levels of learning that take on a wide
range of manifestations. Neither the student descriptions throughout this
essay, nor that of Derrick's learning history, are meant to be
representative in any statistical sense.  Rather, I draw on them to
illuminate significant aspects of the learning process and the varied
impacts, both those direct and indirect, on adult literacy education that
beg additional research and analysis from a wide stream of academic and
practitioner-based frameworks.



________________________________________________________________
Sign Up for Juno Platinum Internet Access Today
Only $9.95 per month!
Visit www.juno.com
_______________________________________________
NLA mailing list: NLA at lists.literacytent.org
http://lists.literacytent.org/mailman/listinfo/nla
LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and goodies for literacy
http://literacytent.org