on urban adult basic eduction (ABE) develops comprehensive and rationale

177 Pages·2007·2.63 MB·English

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DOCUMENT RESUME
...7-
CE 004 895
ED 112 119
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Mezirow, jack; And Others
AUTHOR
Last Gamble on Education: Dynamics of Adult Basic
TITLE
EduCation.
Adult Education Association of U.S.A., Washington,
INSTITUTION
D.C.; Columbia Univ., New York, N.Y. Center for Adult
.,
Education.
Office of Education (DHEW), Washington, D.C.
SPONS AGENCY
75
,-,_PUB DATE
178p.; Appendixes A and B have been deleted due to
NOTE
irreproducibility
MF-$0.76 HC-$9.51 Plus Postage
EDRS PRICE
,
*Adult Basic Education; Adult Educators; Adult
DESCRIPTORS
Students; Community Involvement; Education;
Educational Finance; Educational Objectives;
*Educational Research; Paraprofessional School
Personnel; *Program Administration; Program
Improvement; Student Characteristics; Teacher
Characteristics; *Urban Education
Paraprofessional PersonMel
IDENTiFIERS
.\
ABSTRACT
The book, the result of a two-year research project
on urban adult basic eduction (ABE) develops comprehensive and
significantoaspects in the ABE program
analytical descriptions o
operation and classroom interaction, and the perspectives of those
involved. The study was conducted .4n.large city public schools
throughout,-,the country, and the information gathered is presented in
chapter form, following an introduction stating methodology and
rationale: ABE--The Only Game in Town points out divergent objectives,
and funding on local, State, and Federal levels; Classroom Dynamics
describes student diversity, enrollment, conduct, failure syndrome,
testing, teaching approaches, and discipline; The Students deals with
motivational reasons for enrolling in terms of race, sex, and age;
Teachers and Counselors supplies background and salary information,
and perceptions of students and curriculum; Para?rofessionals
supplies backgrqund and funding information, and defines job duties
and reCruitmentselection process; Directors explores background and
perspectives on students, teachers, the program, funding, salary, and
status; Hustling the Community discusses variables in achieving
funding 'and facilities; Improving the Odds analyzes program
improvements in terms of the students involved. (The document is
indexed.)
(LH)
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ew Dimensions in Program Analysis
LAST GAMBLE ON EDUCATION
Dynamics of Adult Bask Education
Jack Mezirow
Gordon G. Darkenwald
Alan B. Knox
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH.
EDUCATION WELFARE
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF
EDUCATION
THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN
REPRO.
DUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM
f)
THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION
ORIGIN-
ATING IT POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS
STATED DO NOT NECESSARI, Y REPRE-
SENT OFFICIAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF
EQUCATION POSITION OR POLICY
Adult Education Assocjation of the U.S.A.
Washington, D.C.
Z/3
FOR THE PLAYERS
I,
This book is part of a continuing series of i.esearch studies con-
ducted by the Center for Adult Education, Teachers College,
Columbia University in the City of New York. This work was
performed pursuant to a grant from the U.S. Office of Education,
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. However, the
opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position
or policy of the U.S. Office of Education, and no official en-
dorsement by the U.S. Office of Education should be inferred.
C.,
Published by the Adult Education Association of the U.S.A.
810 Eighteenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.
1975
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Methodology and Rationale
The Action
Part I
1 ABEThe Only Game in Town
2 Classroom Dynamics
11
Part H The Gamblers
3 Students
37
57
4 Teacheis and Counselors
5 Paraprofessionals
79
6 Directors
99
Part III
The Set-up
7 Hustling the Community
119
Improving the Odds
141
Selected Bibliography
161
Appendices.
A. Statistical Tables
163
B. Survey Instruments
169
,P
Index
203
Acknowledgments
This book is the result of two years of research on adult basic
education (ABE) as conducted through the public schools in larger
cities in the United States. Our research team, a large one, included
Anselm Strauss and Barney Glaser of the University of California
Medical Center in 'San ;Francisco and their students, Roger Pritchard,
Richard Rizzo, Gregory Abbott, John Henry, Frances Katsuranis and
James Isida; Eugene Litwak and Donald Warren of the University
of Michigan and their students, Roberta Keane, Vernon Moore,
Willerfred Wilson, Robert A. Brown and Bernard McLendon; and
Blanche Geer at Northeastern University with her students, Ann
Sullivan McLaughlin and Gerdes Fleurant. Other faculty, colleagues
who participated _included Leonard Schatzman; University of Cali-
fornia.Medical Center; Eliot Freidson and Berenice Fisher, New York
University; Gladys Engel Lang, State University of New York, Stony
Brook; Joan Phillips Gordon, Quinnipiac College, Connecticut;
Winthrop Adkins and _Thomas Leemon, Teachers College, Columbia
University. Lee Rainwater, Harvard, and Jack London, University of
California, Berkeley, evaluated, our efforts. Ray Ferrier, Director,
Division of Adult Education of the Detroit Public Schooli, also
served as consultant.
Graduate students from Teachers College who worked with us
were Harold Beder, Bart Landry, Jay Samuel Jordan, Pablo Navarro,
Charles Spears, Robert Young, Jack Mjhon, Marcelle`Habibion,
iii
iv
William Heck, Wil Hain S. Hoff, Jr., Alice Jacobson, William S. James,
Eric Karlen, Hong-Woo Lee, Betty Rosen and Ted Stock. Rita Breit-
bart served as administrative assistant to 'project. Lynn Leibowitz,
Marjorie Tippie, Ellen Blunt, and Franceska Smith provided editorial
assistance; Jane Celwyn prepared the manuscript; Michael C. H.
Barnas served as type consultant; and Karla Kaynee designed the
cover.
Special Jecognition should be given the extended analyses of
Barney Glaser. Chapter 5 is largely the product of his collaboration
with Roger Pritchard, and some of Chapter 2 is derived from his
insights.
The work was made possible through the encouragement of Paul
Delker, Chief of the Division of Adult Education, U.S. 'Office of
Education. We hope his boldness in playing a long shot on an un-
tried approach to program analysis has paid off for ABE. The re-
search which produced this book was supported by grants adminis-
tered through his office under authorization of the Adult Education
Act of 1966, Section 309(b).
J.M.
G.G.D.
A.B.K.
o
4P P
SC
Introduction
Methodology and Rationale
Beginning in the spring of 1969, the authors, working through
the Center for Adult Education at Columbia University's Teachers
College, undertook an extraordinlary assignment. We 'agreed to
attempt. to develop and apply a methodology of scientific inquiry
that would illuminate the most significant qualitative aspects of
urban adult basic education (ABE) in this country. Our charge was
to develop a dependable, comprehensive, and analytical descrip-
tion of significant patterns of program operation and classroom
interaction in addition to presenting in an orgrized fashion the
perspectives of those involved.
.We believed that if we could do this well, the result would con-
stitute a research-based frame of refeierice for decision-making that
would be of great value in creating a national strategy for ABE
program development. Through identification and analysis of the
norms involved in program operation, classroom interaction and
human motivation, not only could policy priorities, key problems,
and promising innovations be delineated With greater confidence,
but.the planner could also, as the progran/ unfolds, identify speci-
fic points at which research and demonstration would .most likely
.
provide the greatest payoff,
Moreover, staff development could benefit from such a qualitative
analysis. By highlighting recurrent prOblems of teacher performance,
a dependable picture of current prktice would constitute the
q
Last. Gamble on Education
vi
soundest foundation upon which to build a teacher-traihing curricu-
lum. Training could then focus directly 6n both realistic, next-
step improvements based on the specific skills and practices com-
monly found in the classroom, 2fs well as on less common but
promising innovative practices.
Program evaluation based upon these norms could also benefit
by identifying critical areas of decision-making and key questions
0-1
which need to be asked in assessing program achivement. The
evaluator could become more aware of the ways and reasons why
Qualitative
program objectives have been .modified to fit experience.
data can help him understa6d how priorities are ordered in assess-
ing program consequences and the relationships between program
%
achievements and program =practices. ahase insights are indispensa-
ble in applying evaluation findings to improve adult basic education>.4. -
So the game seemed worth the candle, but the task of systema-
tically capturing the complex and changing reality of urban ABE pro-
grams required an unprecedented effort. Not only was it necessary
about program structure and operation
to secure comparative data
from mAny cities, but we had to select and devise procedures -to
understand and generalize ,about evolving processes of, interaction
among students, staff, ,and administrators that would explain the
ways of program practice. And for this to be intelligible, we had
to see ABE as it is perceived by those most directly involved. Only
then could priorities for planned program change be charted with
confidence.
To be useful to decision makers, generalizations based on this
body of data must enable adult educators to better understand and
predict organizational dynamics and the behavior of students and
staff in ABE programs. Fully developK.7iiiJc c a set of generalizations
would constitute an inductively constructed theory of practice
specific to urban ABE programs as they operate in the public
schools.*
*Glaser and Strauss see as the functions of theory; (1) to enable prediction and ex-
planation of behavior; (2) to be useful in theoretical advance; (3) to be usable in
prediction and explanation should be able to give the
practical applications
practitioner understanding and some control of situations; (4) to provide a per-
a stance to be taken toward data; and (5) to guide and pro-
spective on behavior
vide a style for research on particular areas of behavior. Thus theory is a strategy
for handling data in research, providing modes of conceptualization for describ-
ing and explaminv(The Discovery of Grounded Theory: StrategieS' for Qualitative
Research, Chicago: Aldine Press, 1967, p.3.)
Last Gamble on Education
,
To Ward a Theory of Practice
The relationship of research to theory construction has been
tenuous. Results have been either toe specific or too general to
provide practitioners with practical guidance. For example, Brunner's
major review of 'research in adult education' found most studies
limited to descriptions of a single program or community or to pre:
scripfive analyses of lotal situations. (The six' hundred empirical-
studies/that were summarized deal largely with intektas and motiva-
1.ir.acteristics of participants and leaders, an& roleg of adult
tions,
educators.) Findings could seldom be.,applied beyond the case
situation studied. We hoped to demonstrate a different approach
fo; using jesearch to permit useful generalizations.
a.
We then had to decide how to proceed with the job of reliably
depicting the most important ways students, teachers, and adminis-
trators interact in 'the larger-cities as wel; as their own understand-
ing of why they behave as they do. We wanted to prepare a descrip-
tive analysis, one that would have explanatory and predictive value,
of key qualitative factors that could be fashioned fronVinsightful
generalizations about evolving Programs.
The seminal idea was found in Glaser's and Strauss's methodology
of grounded thepry.2 They advocate inductive development of theory
through comparative analysis of typically similar group situations,
such as classrooms. The researcher goes to the field as an observer
and an interviewer with a minimum of predetermined theoretical
assumptions. Although the grounded theory researcher avoids
approaching his'study with any particular theoretical bias or pre-
determined hypothesis to test, he commonly has a highly flexible
;'orienting framework" made up of what Glaser and Strauss describe
as "prosessual units." They are similar to what Herbert Blumer
calls
"analytical elements" and Lazersfeld "sensitizing concepts." These
may be processes, organization, relations, networks of relations,
states of being, elements pf personal organization, or happenings
that serve to form initial inqary. In studying a series of comparable
situations, the researcher seeks out similarities and differences and
then continues to explore and differentiate them mrsubsequent field
work. The resulting conceptual categories must "fit" (be readily applica-
ble to and representative of the data) and "work" (be relevant and able
to explain behavior being studied.) Categories and their attributed
are, continuously, .tested for validity by analyzing them against, com-
parable as well as contrasting situations, and by modifying them' to
take changing conditions. into account. Additional data may be
found in historical records, letters and diaries, life histories, public
records, professional literature, arranged' group discussions, and
r.
h
viii
Last Gamble on Education
revi8W of relevant personal experience. Grounded theory generated
in this way shOuld become a useful set of related generalizations
of- various levels of abstraction.which are continually in the prO-
restatement through tdstin§ against an ever
cess of refinement and
broader segment of reality.
Becket, Geer, and Hughes developed a 'Somewhat more detailed,
framework for undertaking tiNir field stukof undergraduate
students at the University of Kansas. They each-chose to study an
,,..aspect of college life from the viewpoint of students. "If we do
not see it as hey do
as i "dense network of soda!, relationships,
errands and constraints, a'rid temporarily connected
institutional
corqingencie I-we will not be able to 'understand what they do."3
Their orga 'zing concepf was "perspective," which- ,refers to peo-
pie's actions as well as their' stated *deas accompanytng these
.
actions. Components include (11 definition of the situattoris (what
the world islike-lootheml and the level of importance attributed
to various features of the situation, inclaling what-it allows one to do
and insists that he do, why he is in the situation, and what he can reason"-
ably get out of it);
(2) activities proper and reasonable to engage
in given the.sitaation (actions taken to gather information about the
environment -.1-...such as expectations of others, how one is meet -
sing these demands, how one is regarded; and rewards and punish-
-g
ments,one can expect -- and actions taken to meet expectations
of others, both institutional and informal); and (3) criteria of judg-
ment istartdarcds of value .against which people are judged).. The
definition of the situation hasfour major features: (1) statement of
goals for which one may reasonably' strive, (2) description of the
organizations within which action occurs and their demands upon,
participants, (3) forrfial and informal rules by which action is con-
,
strained, and (4) rewards and punishments.
o
Methodology of the Study -
We decided to adapt these ideas to our analysis of urban ABE
program practice. A <first year's study was planned in which we
of
analyzed three interrelated dimensions:, program organization and
functioning, 'which profoundly influenced and were Influenced by
the process of classroom interaction, and the perspectives and
involved, which, in turn, helped to explain
characteristics of
the "why" of clasgroom interaction..lt seemed particularly critical
to see what was hapenning from the poidt.of view of ABE student.,
because efforts to improve the program depend on improving their
performance. We wanted to know holy students see the program,
themselves in it, the teachers, and other students; why they feel
A1
o