3/2

An interesting review article, by Lynn Z. Bloom, in JAC, of Jeffrey Sommer's Teaching Writing to Adults closes with this paragraph:

In fact, the main trouble with Teaching Writing To Adults is that it isn’t Lives on the Boundary. It is Sommer’s fate to have published an adequate but arid volume on how to teach writing to adults in the same year that Mike Rose’s brilliant and humane work appeared on the same subject. Teaching Writing to Adults does the job, but it is Lives on the Boundary that will linger, indelibly, in our hearts and minds and classrooms.

Is there something in this new article that needs to be said about Lives on the Boundary?

Sohn is talking about the power of expressivist pedagogies...do I want to do something with this, suggest that for some, connecting with professional writing might be more meaningful than writing about the self? What are the complications of asking adults to write about the self?

The questions I'm asking: What do we know about the literacy histories and current literate practices of adult students?

How do we define adult students? It seems as though some classification work should be involved in this piece? See Merriam and Caffarella?

Article:

Section 1: Why are adult students in school? Overview...draw on what my students say, mix in research.

Section 2: Description of study

• Includes description of what I did and why.
• Overview of participants
• Table with composite data
• Explanation of research cite
• Explanation of interviewing process

Section 3: Academic, Professional and Community Literacy (overview)

Section 4: Organized around implication statements and draws on all seven research participants. (Sohn writes: "Acknowledging once again that these findings are not generalizable, I highlight the major arguments" (432) and offers 8 arguments/implications of her work. Her implications engaged issues of literacy, education, family, work.) See post for my "Implications."

Section 5: Wrap-up/conclusion.

So, now, the question is--is Sohn's framework the right one for me? Do I have the implications that she has? There will be a considerable amount of work to do to go back and revisit the transcripts of the other 5 people I didn't write about in my dissertation. But that work could be interesting and useful. The question is--should the article focus on 2-3 learners, in particular, or should it focus on the whole gang?