Blogging on adult literacy, 2011

and as usual this “academic” study uses assumptions which promote the economic interests of those who funded it.

Craig Murray, 2012 - Year of Crash and Opportunity

This involves the principle, of its nature alien to Socialism, that you must not protest against an evil which you cannot prevent.

Orwell, As I Please, 40 (1944)

1.
My Christmas reading has been the second volume of Hans Küng's biography, Disputed Truth. The book is thick with names from my wasted youth - von Balthasar and Claude Geffré, Raymond Brown and Walter Kasper, Karl Rahner and Yves Congar, J-B Metz, Jürgen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg - all the theologians who bewitched and bewildered me for a handful of years until, thank Marx, the political economists gave me a good shake and I went to work at a gas station.

This time, I find myself reading for the story of how theology has been shaped and driven by power relations in society. This is not a particularly religious story. It's part of a 600 year old story of Western humanities and sciences and the myths we create around these. This one strand of that story, tracing the relations between university theology, officially sanctioned beliefs, pastoral work and economics (which, we seldom remember, used to be a subsection of ethics) is my home country. But someone else could do the same thing by examining, say, psychological theories, practical counseling and psychiatry, the regulation of service providers and key socio-economic developments; or, say, the study of astro-physics, the historical links between NASA and the military, and the corresponding industrial-military economies. No matter what the strand, the story is always of the over-riding influence of political wealth and power on both intellectual theory and application, and the deceits good people use to avoid acknowledging this.

2.
Earlier this month, Michael Lind wrote a brief, exasperated Salon post in the wake of Christopher Hitchen's death and the tributes that followed. I don't know much about Hitchens - the only work of his I recall reading was his treatment of Orwell, Why Orwell Matters, which I found slight and odd and rather less interesting than almost any of Orwell's own essays - but one part of Lind's post hooked me. He writes:

But though he played one on TV, Hitchens was not an intellectual, if the word has any meaning anymore. Those known by the somewhat awkward term “public intellectuals” can be based in the professoriate, the nonprofit sector, or journalism. They can even be politicians, like the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan. But genuine intellectuals, as distinct from mere commentators or TV talking heads, need to meet two tests.

First, intellectuals need to produce some substantial works of scholarship, literature or rigorous reporting, distinct from the public affairs commentary for which they may be best known to a broad public. If you do nothing but review other people’s work or write brief columns or blog posts, it is easy to appear to be much smarter and erudite than you really are.

Second, genuine intellectuals base their interventions in public debate on the basis of some coherent view of the world. A dedication to rigorous and systematic reasoning, wherever it may lead, is what distinguishes intellectuals from lobbyists or partisan spin doctors who change their views according to the demands of a special interest or a party. It also distinguishes them from mere “contrarians” — the term Hitchens used to describe himself — who attract publicity by taking controversial stands according to their whims.

- Hitchens, gossip columnist of genius

It is often said of bloggers that they are "mere commentators" or "mere 'contrarians'” who "review other people’s work or write brief columns or blog posts" occasionally attracting "publicity by taking controversial stands according to their whims."

What Lind, and others, would rather see is "some substantial works of scholarship, literature or rigorous reporting" based on "some coherent view of the world." A body of work, in other words, that is both internally consistent - the parts and pieces fit together and all point in the same direction - and that is more than derivative, more than talking about what someone else said or wrote.

I'm not convinced that publishing papers (but where?) or a book would constitute something more substantial than this blog. All the same, I tend to agree that the format helps me "appear to be much smarter and erudite" than I am. And it's less tightly organized than it might be; the themes and learning too scattered to allow easy access.

In fact, I'm not quite sure what the point of the blog is. In the past, people have written me, thanking me for what I write. I'm flattered, of course, but unconvinced. I suspect I mostly offer a sort of gruff, entertaining cheer-leading that says out loud all the sarcastic things we can't say in staff or funder meetings. I would rather be a source of comfort and encouragement for those who work alone in scattered neighbourhoods or outside our cities. But I'm probably too self-absorbed and grumpy for that.

3.
What to make of the blog, then, as we roll over into 2012? What's the point of it all? Do I just plod on, adjusting to changing economic circumstances, contributing to... what? What's the goal? How will I know when I'm done?

For that matter, how would I know if I was done with literacy itself?

I mentioned some papers I was reading and wanting to talk about (see here). Since then, I've done precious little writing about them, but did manage to add five more papers to the pile. These are, largely, way-point papers: they sum up where we are now in adult literacy work. A few also offer a bit of history, though it tends to be lukewarm.

I've long wanted to read a proper critical, political-economy of adult and family literacy work in Canada. We, too, have university-sanctioned and officially funded theories and histories that fit only poorly with front-line practice and memories. We, too, get shoved about by economic and political currents, adjust to our new course, and then, frequently, tell ourselves fairy tales to ward off despair. Sadly, I'm not competent to write a political-economy of Canadian literacy work. At best, I know enough to contribute. (I've an outline sketched out on a scrap of paper someplace around here, and written bits like this December 31st 2010 post.) I also want to create an account of literacy work in New Brunswick since 1980, which chiefly involves interviewing some people before they forget who said what to whom. But, in any case, these are hardly the topics for an 800 word blog post.

The thing I'm least likely to do is also the most helpful thing I could do: produce an honest, day-by-day account of frontline adult literacy and basic education work. There's too much self-censorship for that (chiefly due to a backdrop of government funding and stage management), and anyway I can't resist big idea writing. I will probably always tell the little stories, but there are gaps in my narrative that make it an unreliable record of failure and success.

Mind you, there are things I still want to say. I want to write about accountability and assessment. I would like to make an effort to better promote or defend my adopted theory - theories? - of adult learning and reading, of effective classroom design and management, and of my use of Choice Theory in my work.

And I very much want to speak to some of the larger themes of literacy theory and history in Canada. I want to explain, again, why universities aren't our friend, why we should shut up about Freire, why no politician will ever listen to research finding, why umbrella organizations need to be called to account, why... well, why a bunch of stuff.

I still want to write, and so I'll probably continue to blog for some time yet.

Still.

I do wish you would write. Even if you wrote badly, just once a week, I'd like to know what you're thinking, what you're doing, what you're going to do next, what you wish you could do but can't.

You know, when other people don't "write brief columns or blog posts" it's also "easy to appear to be much smarter and erudite than you really are."

I'm just saying. I'd do more and better if you did some too.

Okay. That's enough earnestness for now. I'm going across the street for a couple of bottles of Birell's malt. You should, too.

Happy New Year's, everyone. Thanks for reading.

Tests make us crazy

If you don’t realize it’s crazy, If you can’t understand the source
Don’t reach too fast for the answers, ‘Cause it gets worse

- Headstones, Unsound

Some of us act crazy when we meet tests.  Call it test anxiety or emotionality or whatever - it is a curious phenomenon.

We recently held a mock GED write at one of my workplaces.  Though only one learner actually had a seizure, almost all of them suffered enough stress to score well below what their classwork would predict.  This included people who had written the same indicator test in the same setting surrounded by many of the same people.  The mock invigilator also reported feeling a growing sense of anxiety as the testing progressed.  (I confess to pacing a bit outside the room, but mostly I was successful at distracting myself with paperwork and such.)

The tests had absolutely no significance.  They really were "pretend" things.  We aren't empowered to certify learners, and had no intention of treating them differently based on their results.  We weren't even particularly interested in recording their results.  We did it purely for the experience, and in the hope that it might lessen some of the anxiety they felt on the day of the real tests.

There was some last minute cramming, which is interesting given the GED's deliberate focus away from testing memory.  For the most part, these are skill-based, multiple choice tests in which learners draw facts, inference or conclusions from information presented as prose, maps, charts or diagrams.  The tests go so far as to provide common math formulas and calculator instructions.  In other words, there's just not that much to remember.

There was also a certain amount of... um... piety or superstition or mysticism going on.  A couple of my learners expressed the view that they "felt" they were going to pass "at least two" without being sure which two.  They hoped - hard - for the best.  Even I, when I had a chance to mark my learners' tests after work, made sure I was listening to positive music I particularly enjoyed.  The next day, when it emerged that I had two more to mark, I remember feeling a spark of worry that I wouldn't be able to play my music loudly enough for them to receive the positive vibes or... whatever.

We go crazy when it comes to tests.

Here's one more thought.

I came to this work via basic adult literacy.  In that domain, I was always aware of the level of textual or mathematical difficulty my learners were able to deal with comfortably.  In the jargon of the work, I knew their independent literacy and numeracy levels.  In point of fact - probably due to the advantage that comes with doing tasks in context - my learners often functioned at a higher level when they were out in the real world.  But the point is, I knew how they were doing (as did they).

But when it comes to GED testing, I have no sure knowledge of how well they will perform.  A few people do better than expected: most do worse.  And the cause of this seems to have nothing to do with the content of our classwork.

I marked my learners mock GED tests with hope and trepidation and a carefully created WMP playlist because I really didn't know how well they would do even though they were people I knew well and had worked closely with over weeks and months and even years.  I mean, I knew what they knew in terms of science or social studies or geometry.  I just didn't know how they would test.

Tests are strange things.  They make the world a strange place.  They make strangers of us to each other.

Like you, I've read lots about test anxiety and stuffed my learners with Good Advice.  That rarely does much good, can't hold a candle to our deep-seated superstitions, and runs the real risk of blaming the victims.

I mean, I'm a sensible, grown man, and yet I was worried about marking the tests while not listening to the Headstones.  Deep breathing and positive self-reinforcement don't cure crazy like that.

Adult ed: You're doing it wrong

[This] hands-on learning event... will model instructional design processes and address:
* Why should you care about learning styles? How do you deal with the issue?
* Why is the learning cycle the foundation of training? How do you build a cycle?
* When do you start planning the evaluation piece? What are some tools?

Whether you are an instructional designer, manager, consultant, or other training professional, this session will help you to inform your clients or leadership team about the need for solid instructional design in any training program.

- advert for training session

Yeah, um... no.  This session wasn't hands on and it didn't do any of that.

I'm a little skeptical of adult learning principles (see here).  Still, the principles can be useful insofar as they give us things to think about and encourage us to do a better job.  And you, sir, could use some encouragement.

Let's start with "learning styles" - which, by the way, aren't really an "issue". Adult Learning Principles remind us to deliver information in a variety of ways so we can communicate better with an audience made up of people who learn best in different ways (seeing, hearing, talking, writing, doing and so on).  Talk about it, but also write it out.  Put up a chart, but also explain it verbally.  Give people a chance to talk about it with themselves, each other or you.  Allow them time and space to write it down, or to doodle thoughts across someone else's writing.  Offer reflection time and reflective questions.  Write out or talk through some scenarios, or offer exercises to allow people to apply ideas. Make sure you present ideas by moving from the individual to the general, and also from the general to the individual.  And check in often.  Ask, "Is that enough information?"  "Do you need to see that again?"

What you can't do "about" learning styles is fit them individually into different slots in a linear learning process (often oddly referred to as a "learning cycle") such as ERGA or Experience - Reflection - Generalization - Application.  You can't, as you proposed, offer something for the divergers in one stage, something for the convergers in the next, and then provide something for the assimilators.  You can't make the first third of your process attractive to auditory learners, tailor the second third to visual learners, and wrap up with a kinesthetic third. If it's anything, ERGA is a unitary process. Nobody learns by attending to only one stage or step: all your learners have to pass through all the stages.

And what to say about your surprise announcement, "When we did the crossword puzzle, that was the experiential, hands-on learning piece..."?

Seriously?  I thought the puzzle was an ice breaker.  Dude, experiential learning has to be more than token.  People may be surprised to find they've done hands on learning, but they should never be surprised to discover that their learning was hands on.

Nor does writing a sentence or phrase inside a picture of a sticky-note, twice, constitute two other instances of hands on learning.  You might as well have said that "hands on learning takes place wherever learners have hands."  (And let me just slip in here my suspicion that this odd reduction of hands on learning to writing is an out-growth of elearning systems that preclude practical, tactile, hands on experiences.)

By the way, even if you're not doing an ice-breaker, it helps if you find out something about your audience, and allow your audience to meet one another.  The whole tone of the workshop would have struck me as exceedingly rude if I hadn't recognized the motif: the expert professor standing in front of his class.

Another free tip: don't serve a heavy, all-carb lunch immediately before you deliver a talk-heavy workshop in a room where the windows won't open.  (And, yes, knowing your room in advance is also part of your responsibility.)

And maybe you didn't realize that, in a professional workshop setting, important written information needs to be available as handouts - handouts which mirror the powerpoints or wall-mounted, pre-prepared flip chart paper.  And that flip chart paper needs to work with the actual sight-lines of the room.  If it is not important, then don't bother us with it.  In any case, if you find yourself saying to a full quarter of your audience, "Some of you at the back may need to stand up over here to see these [sheets of flip chart paper]" then you've pretty much failed.

(Please note: a trite "I don't do powerpoints" in no way excuses you from doing something useful for visual learners.)

While we're on the topic of prep, neither a 90 minute infomercial for your course, or a listing of the salient points good trainers (allegedly) need to be aware of, really counts as a learning experience - unless, I suppose, people came to learn about your course and, you know, a bullet-point version of all the terms you think people ought to know.  Dude, if you have too much information to deal with appropriately in 90 minutes, plan to deal with less.  Better to make one point well than to offer a cursorily look at a whole host.

You know, even an old fashioned lecture or essay provides a clear introduction, middle and conclusion.  Done well, these provide concrete examples to illustrate generalized ideas.  They use a minimum of acronym-laced jargon.  They give their audience or readers every opportunity to divine what they are about to tell them, what they are telling them, and what they told them.  You didn't seem to do any intro or wrap-up at all.

Oh, and this isn't university, so stop telling me that I have to use your model "or one very like it."  I do serious work with serious people.  Models either help me with that - and a helpful model is self-evident - or they make more paper piled up on the side of my desk.  Let me say that again: helpful models are self-evidently helpful.

Telling me that, if you came to evaluate my program, the model is all you would be concerned with, only tells me you pretty-much missed the point of evaluation.

While we're talking evaluation.....  Yes, evaluation is important, and it needs to be thought about from the very beginning.  That's the not very interesting answer to "When do you start planning the evaluation piece?"  But your idea that we ought to plan out our evaluation before we plan out our learning goals is not a formula for success: it's a formula for fraud.

Moreover, learning goals are best co-constructed.  (Among other things this helps get around the sticky question of who determines the "needs" in a "needs assessment".)  Even when certification is involved, quality facilitators - and I do mean facilitators, not testers - find out what learners already know and what they want to learn, how they feel they learn best, and how they want the facilitator to check in on the effectiveness of their learning.

Speaking of evaluation, in a workshop setting, it may be possible to ask people what they want to get out of it.  That is, I think, the ideal.  But it may not be possible, and that's okay too.  But there really is no excuse for not checking in with people about whether or not they understand what you're saying, or have questions, or even care enough about it to go on....  And if you're going to trash the "happy, sad, mad" type of evaluation, you ought to have something to replace it that's more sophisticated than "Give me one word that sums up this workshop for you." [Up-date: on promised web evaluation; see below]

Was the workshop a complete waste of time?  Um.. yeah.  It mishandled learning styles, had a questionable take on evaluation, over-emphasized the value of models, and ignored key factors like positive relationships, a safe, nurturing environment, an individualized curriculum, and the opportunity for learners to experience and build upon small successes and shared, positive adventures.

But it did call attention to two interesting challenges.

One is the issue of clients.  Who is the client in a classroom or workshop or training setting?  Is it the learner who has come to learn, or the funder who is paying for the service?  You touched on that when you acknowledged that at any moment "the Minister of Whatever" can declare a training need and expect us to move to meet it.  But you blustered on saying something about how knowing the theory helped win some battles or not lose as many or something, and off we went to your world of theory.

I think you're wrong.  I don't think knowledge of theories or research papers or acronyms are at all useful when it comes to dealing with the Minister of Whatever and his Business Roundtable on Social Spending buddies.  I don't think it answers questions like "Who is the client?" or "What do we do when the wants and needs of the learner don't match the wants and needs of the funder?"  And I think those are really important questions.

The other challenge or problem has to do with the fact that most of us know what, in theory, we ought to be doing, but frequently do something else.  Why?  Is the theory wrong?  Are we lazy or light headed?  Do we lack moral courage or critical faculties?  What are the forces at work - from without or within - that stand between all those "best practice" papers and our actual, day-to-day practice?

We need to know if we want real change.

I'm not great at short-session training.  But even on my worst day, I've never presented a workshop as badly as that fellow did.  They say he's director of a Diploma in Adult Education program at a university, as well as a long-time consultant in the adult training industry.  Gawd help the adult training industry.

"CSTD does not issue refunds."

No, I shouldn't think so.  Not with product like this.

Update

I was offered a chance to complete an online evaluation form, but it started with, "Your information (Required)."  Yes?  My information?  Do you mean my workshop registration number?  766803?

No.  You want my email address (again) and my phone number.  Because phone numbers are important for evaluations because...   Yeah, um... no.  Don't call.  It's not me, it's you.

(Losers.)

Christmas events 2011 (Part 2)

Another Saturday, another couple of Christmas parties.  Actually, I only worked one of them - "worked" being a silly word for the pleasantries of sharing a book or a carol in the afternoon sun - and forced my colleague to race off to read Night Before Christmas to the several hundred kids at the other one.

We did our colouring - reading - crafting corner thing again for a crowd of 40 - 50 kids and their parents.  Two volunteers tended the crafting table, another the colouring table, and I gladly curled up in the reading corner.  We had a passel of Christmas books of greater and lesser quality (as well as one or two board books, like Miss Mary Mack, that were just too popular to not take).  The clear favourites were How The Grinch Stole Christmas (the real one) and Disney's Christmas Sing Along.

Kids wandered in and out of the corner.  The most I ever had reading around me was eight, but I was never alone.  At one point, a little girl came and sat down, picked up a Franklin Christmas story, and gamely said, "Let's see if I can sound this one out."  Fearing that she couldn't - I remembered her from the summer - I encouraged her to read me Tale of the Christmas Mouse. She did, twice, and we moved on to other things.

And here's what stuck with me; this: in the middle of a Christmas party with cookies and colouring, stickers and markers and friends, she chose to take time to practice her reading.

Kids like to read, I swear they do.  Kids like to read, and they like to work hard at reading more and reading better.  Kids like to read.

If they don't, where they don't, it's because some adult has worked very, very hard to achieve that end.

Not literacy - more and better jobs

It is ironic, though, that this OECD report (emanating from the employment and social policy side of the organization, DELSA)  flags as the underlying causes of inequality precisely those policies which the economic side (ECO) advocated for so strenuously through at least the 1990s and much of the past decade as well.
...[The] first OECD Jobs Study of the early 1990s are prepared by ECO and advocated “flexible” labour markets to generate jobs. The key argument was that employment growth required labour market de-regulation, and that we should not be too concerned if the jobs being created were insecure and poorly paid. Relatedly, reports advocated major cuts to unemployment insurance and welfare programs which were seen as needed to make wages flexible and to reduce taxes.  ... [Now] they tell us that the Canadian tax/transfer system offsets only 40% of any increase in market income inequality – one of the lowest proportions in the OECD – compared to 70% in the mid 1990s when Canada’s redistributive effort was at near Nordic levels!

Andrew Jackson, Mind the OECD Credibility Gap

You can read this in the CBC Business story, Wealth gap widens to 30-year high:

"Our report clearly indicates that upskilling of the workforce is by far the most powerful instrument to counter rising income inequality," [OECD Secretary General Angel] Gurría said. "The investment in people must begin in early childhood and be followed through into formal education and work."

It led some literacy people (who ought to have known better) to repeat the mischief that people are poor or struggling because they are under-educated.  Tweeted one in-cautious soul:

As the rich-poor gap widens, Workplace Education is the most powerful instrument to counter rising income inequality. cbc.ca/news/business/…

But that's not what the report says; not in whole, and not in specific reference to Canada.  What it says is, "Employment  is the most promising way of tackling inequality. The biggest challenge is creating more and better jobs that offer good career prospects and a real chance to people to escape poverty," and "Reforming tax and benefit policies is the most direct instrument for increasing redistributive effects."

Most promising way?  More and better jobs.

Most direct instrument?  Reforming (a.k.a., "raising") taxes.

Certainly, education and/or workplace retraining are important. But we need to be very careful with statements like "Investing in human capital is key." Citizens are not "human capital." They are human beings: human beings who live here and raise families here and die here. If you really see them as "capital", as part of the cash, goods, property and other assets owned by a business, then fuck you.

Too, the statement "there must be sufficient incentives for workers and employers to invest in skills throughout the working life" fits very nicely with the ideas like subsidizing on-the-job training (to the benefit of the wealthy) while reducing or ending employment insurance or social assistance payments (to the determent of the poor). "The provision of freely accessible and high-quality public services, such as education, health, and family care, is important," they write. Yes it is. But only if "freely accessible" is not limited to employment-related programs and services, or schemes for convincing HDRCanada to pay for provincial programs.

I'm not very interested in anything the OECD says, by the way. I think we've allowed an awful lot of damage to be done to our nation by people who were happy to use shallow, jargon-laced OECS reports for cover. We don't gain anything by continuing to pay attention to what is in essence a lobby group for international banking and business interests.

But if you're interested, here's the "Key policy recommendations for OECD countries from Divided We Stand" section of the two-page COUNTRY NOTE: CANADA

• Employment is the most promising way of tackling inequality. The biggest challenge is creating more and better jobs that offer good career prospects and a real chance to people to escape poverty.
• Investing in human capital is key. This must begin from early childhood and be sustained through compulsory education. Once the transition from school to work has been accomplished, there must be sufficient incentives for workers and employers to invest in skills throughout the working life.
• Reforming tax and benefit policies is the most direct instrument for increasing redistributive effects. Large and persistent losses in low-income groups following recessions underline the importance of government transfers and well-conceived income-support policies.
• The growing share of income going to top earners means that this group now has a greater capacity to pay taxes. In this context governments may re-examine the redistributive role of taxation to ensure that wealthier individuals contribute their fair share of the tax burden.
• The provision of freely accessible and high-quality public services, such as education, health, and family care, is important.

OECD (2011), Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising 

A program that works (even when we're grumpy)

It started off a lousy rotten day - wet and dark and gray as grimm - and nothing much changed the whole way through.  (I got especially depressed after lunch, reading Matt Taibbi's Griftopia.)

When suppertime came, neither one of us was much in the mood for dragging our asses and the bookwagon through porridge-cold puddles.  I mean, we really didn't want to go out there.  Not even the Christmas lights helped: everything seemed dull and flat and lousy.  I'd have taken a bitter, bedraggled picture for you but I forgot my camera.  The first wagon of our ninth year - a wet, dark, lousy, rotten night.  And our feet were wet.

Still, we went.  Two little kids borrowed straight off.  (Rotten kids.)  And then a young mom yelled after us from her stoop: "Can we borrow some books?"  And another mom borrowed John Saul books.  (Whatever.)  And a dad was excited to see the Frosty the Snowman board book.  And somebody yelled that our Christmas lights looked great.  (Idiots.)  And a mom was grateful for the leveled books we brought for her and her son.  He had moved up from Level A to Level D, she said.  "I'm so proud of him."  (Yeah, yeah.  Did I mention our feet?)

Little kids borrowing - kids so small they can hardly stand - insisting on this book not that one.  And parents saying but that's the one we just put back, and kids not caring one bit because that's the book they want.  Kids not even born when we started the program.  (What do they care if our feet are wet!)  An eleven year old wandered up looking to borrow a chapter book - it was then we realized we'd forgotten to put the chapter book box on - and took something from the 12+ box.  Some more parents, some more kids.  We stopped to pick up some returns and found two Christmas cards addressed to us tucked in among them.  (Humbug!)

Lousy, wet, dark, rotten....

 

Christmas events 2011 (Part 1)

We've had our first Christmas wagon of the year, and our first Christmas party.

We used the little Eliminator battery to run coloured LED lights again, though I want to do more decorating.  (As with last year, we tucked the powerbox into a plastic box with a notch cut in the side.)  After we got going, I noticed our larger LED lights are running low (batteries, I suppose) and I forgot my flashlight so it was still too dark for proper browsing.  All the same, we attracted some positive comment and lent out a passel of books on doorsteps.

We went to the Christmas party not quite sure what role we were to play.  (The ask was, "Would you come and read?")  It turned out they wanted a storytent-style book corner, which was okay with us.  We had few kids sit and read - this was in a neighbourhood we visit only once or twice a year, so families don't know us well - and one adult engage us to ask an adult learning program.  But that's what event-tents are like, and we're okay with it.

The party featured a delightful little-kids' choir, as well as Bernard the Magician.  It was interesting watching Bernard work and adapt to his young audience.  As the show went on, he used fewer puns, and went with more slap-stick.  He called out volunteers, supported them to ensure they were successful, and gave the larger audience cues for when to clap and exclaim - four and five year olds learning how to be the audience of a magic show.  I found myself thinking of it as a learning event.  He had to adapt to his environment and audience to reach his objectives: they, too, had to adjust their behaviour to work with him toward the common goal of an entertaining show.

Later today, I'm going over to the office to prep for next weekend's parties (we're taking part in two) and add to the wagon's decorations.  I also want to dig out decorations for my classroom so we can start decorating on Monday.

'Tis the season.

Papers about adult literacy work

As you know, I took a small and possibly annoying part in the "Beyond the IALS" conversation.  Tannis was on there and posted a number of papers from this year's "Practitioner perspectives on the changing landscape of adult literacy," an Adult Education Research Conference institute or conference or some-such.  (To see a host of interesting conference papers, see here.)

I've been reading three of those papers repeatedly and concurrently.  Weaving the stories of one through the prism of the others: finding plainly stated in one what the others hinted at.  If we had time, if we were in one of those comfortable restaurants where they didn't mind you lingering long after the meal (and had a handy flip chart) we could talk about them and the many, many ideas they hold.  But, alas, we are not.  And I confess to not being quite sure how to start.

Well, maybe I can start by telling you about them.

The paper that first caught my eye was Certification for what? Practitioner perspectives on the changing landscape of adult literacy education by Suzanne Smythe of Simon Fraser University.  I found this to be a wonderful, short, thought-provoking paper demanding happy and angry and sad and emphatic margin notes.

I next read Essentializing the experiences and expertise of adult literacy educators by Christine Pinsent-Johnson.  This paper talks about the way the new Essential Skills framework - and, to a lesser degree, IALS testing methodology - are changing the way facilitators are taught and/or required to support literacy learning, "discounting both research and practice based knowledge of literacy and adult learning."

That last paper made repeated reference to Richard Darville's work, so I moved straightway to reading his Unfolding the adult literacy regime.  In the abstract, he writes, "A quarter-century’s development of a regime that promotes and regulates adult literacy has diminished the space for responsive and relational literacy work."  Here, "regime" has the precise meaning of a system of control or management made up of related assumptions, regulations and power relationships.  Darville suggests "an ensemble of governmental, administrative, academic and media processes" determine this regime; and though I am not confident he  succeeds in "mapping their connections" he at least acknowledges that what happens in Canadian literacy classrooms is increasingly determined by the media, far away think-tanks focused on trade and international economic development, civil servants, and pollsters.

I've stuck these papers up on Google Docs, not out of any disrespect to the AERC, but simply to ensure that they will be there - somewhere - when I want them.  Go and read and write.

We'll talk more later.  :)