Chapter Outline

Chapters for my project:

1. Introduction (Sections: Adult Learners (current, history), Contexts for Adult Learning, Shifts in Higher Education (technology, faculty workers, privatization), Workplace Literacy)
2. Method
3. Histories--PAST (Themes: lack of connection with school literacy is a theme we see with all three male participants in the study...Goran, Brad, and Joe...there is a connection here to be made with Tom's work. What are the other themes?) School Histories, Work Histories, Life Histories
4. Current Literacy Practices--PRESENT (focus on work...explanation of how workplace and academic literacies are different***)
5. On being an adult student. ???

Settings

Scenes

Genres

5. Implications

Genre or literacy practices? Are these two things in conflict somehow? Can they both be a part of this?

Two big themes I am dealing with:

• Literacy instruction and adult students
• Literacy for professional development (connection between literacy and work--literacy as serving work... opposed to state, church, self-development)

I think that as I move forward, this post helps me keep in mind the big picture questions I am asking and trying to answer in this project.

This seems like it could be useful--but I'm not sure how or where...

In the case of the half-dozen adult students I interviewed for this study, I found that each brought his/her own unique genre repertoire to bear on the academic writing situations he/she faced at NSC. This repertoire consisted of:

1. the vestiges of academic genres he/she retained from prior school experiences;
2. the genres of writing he/she knew and produced at home or in the community; and/or
3. the various professional genres he/she knew and produced on the job.

As I'm going back and looking at transcripts today (5/21), it's occurring to me how much information I gathered from these folks that doesn't necessarily have to do with literacy, but more to do with life and school, generally. Why are they here? What has been their journey? What are the struggles they have faced coming back to school. These fall more into the "adult education" side of this project and less in the "literacy" side. And yet, this information all seems important...so how to deal with it in the book? Perhaps its own chapter, before we move into past and current literacy practices?

Another possible chapter: Writing about Don, defending don, paying tribute to Don, etc. Might I conduct a sort of meta-analysis of this body of work? Could be cool.