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As I prepare to go back to the ESOL Adult classroom, I have been thinking a lot about how to turn theories learned in the past two years into practice. I am creating a new curriculum, based on the “backward design process” framework of Tighe and Wiggins called, Understanding by Design (UbD). I will also be transforming the written curriculum into E-learning modules using Adobe Captivate for {We Speak America }.  It is a very creative process.  It is also life changing.  The impact of good pedagogy on the lives of adult learner is limitless.   But it takes a lot of planning and thinking, and a commitment to harness best practices.

How Do Adults (Re)Learn?

As a newly minted masters graduate, I find that there exists an imbalance in education graduate schools: an overemphasis on children and an unintentional neglect of adult learners.  Because of the dearth of adult educators in graduate school, there was no conversation between them and their K-12 colleagues.   I found myself trying to understand the K-12 cognitive framework and to desperately apply it to adult learning.

For instance, one of the first readings I had to plow through was Bransford’s “How Children Learn.” It was a valuable reading material for inexperienced educators, or for educators who were not in K-12, like me. Since most of my adult learners had an interruption in schooling somewhere down the K-12 line, applying the children learning theory was a profound cultural process. I had to wonder what happened to adult’s ability to learn if they had to stop going to school and work at the age of twelve. I was also curious what happened when they started having children of their own during their teenage years.  Of course, the interruption was occuring in the adult learner’s native language.   Fifteen years later, in the great land of opportunity, they found themselves in my classroom, learning English.  What makes them different from other adult learners, especially their American native-born counterparts, is the urgency by which they view the process of English language acquisition: a matter of survival, so to speak.  Their lives hinge on the few words they could learn so they could use them to take the train, negotiate for goods, and speak with their neighbors.

Luckily, in the U.S., there are free programs for adult immigrants.  Adult learners now have to understand that the world of education has changed since they left school.   In some schools, it has turned from a didactic to a more authentic learning process.   They might be surprise to hear a teacher ask them, “What would you like to learn?”  Most adult students come from countries that have yet to discover Paolo Freire and his Pedagogy of the Oppressed.   They continue to view learners as empty vessels that need filling, with no less than information they could spout at any given minute. 

Re-learning is a process.  For immigrants, it is a cultural process.   Teachers are considered authority figures in some countries.  I came from such a culture.  We bow at their command.   They’re not the Freirian facilitators who see the classroom as a community of equals.   The process of learning is teacher-centered and teacher-led.   Change means a shift in the way we think about education, and a reassessment of how we are educated as children.

In the early part of the twentieth century, education focused on the acquisition of literacy skills: simple reading, writing, and calculating. It was not the general rule for educational systems to train people to think and read critically, to express themselves clearly and persuasively, to solve complex problems in science and mathematics. Now, at the end of the century, these aspects of high literacy are required of almost everyone in order to successfully negotiate the complexities of contemporary life. (more here)

Real Learning

I have been in adult education for fifteen years and have witnessed different models of teaching.  I have seen the range, from totalitarianism to absolute kumbaya freedom.   I have seen classrooms with full time teachers with health benefits and part-timers who swing in on rollerblades.    I have heard of stories in EF (Foreign) L programs abroad where teachers are “discovered” in tourist supermarkets and invited to teach because they’re 1. American 2. Blondes.   While that sounds more like Miss Texas, overall, their pedagogy, if it even exists, is a mystery.  Not surprising.  Many adult literacy teachers run into their jobs.  Like me, I proudly profess.  However, after a few years of adult-sitting, it behooves a teacher to do some research and find out best practices in the profession.  Yes, it is a profession.

First, I would give an adult education teacher one of Paolo Freire’s books.   Since Pedagogy of the Oppressed is so widely circulated, I would opt for Teachers as Cultural Workers.  I think it is important for an educator to get a holistic perspective of adult learners, not only of their lives in the U.S., but also in their respective countries.  Connect with their histories.  Explore why such history inform the lives they lead in their adopted country. Once an educator understands what they have been through, and what they need to survive in a new country, the educational voyage becomes a conversation between the different stakeholders.  It becomes a process of relearning for both parties. From here, real learning and teaching can begin.

Related Reading:  Understanding by Design, Paolo Freire Institute,

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