. DOCUMENT RESUME ...7- CE 004 895 ED 112 119 95 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) *********************************************************************** Documents acquired by ERIC include many informal unpublished * materials not available from other sources. ERIC makes every effort * * to obtain the best copy av#ilable. Nevertheless, items of marginal * -.-Ac reproducibility are often encountered and this affects the quality * * of the microficheand hardcopy reproductions ERIC makes available * * via the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS). EDRS is not * responsible for the ,.quality of the original document. Reproductions-* * supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original. *********************************************************************** 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