Adult Learners, Autobiography, And Educational Planning: Reflections on Pedagogy, Andragogy, and Power

Adult students were rarely mentioned during my study of composition theory and pedagogy as a graduate student at the State University of New York at Albany. While there, I became familiar with the writing process movement and a follower of James MOffett and Peter Elbow. I discovered Janet Emig's research into the composing process, Nancy Sommers' work on revision, Mina Shaughnessy's portrait of error, Linda Flower and John Hayes' cognitive schemas, the rhetorics of E.D. Hirsch and James Kinneavy. Most important, for me, were James Britton and his colleagues' study of audience and William Perry's scheme of intellectual and ethical development. In essence, I was introduced to writing theories and pedagogies developed by theorists and practitioners who focused on students eighteen or younger, and I developed course syllabi and writing tasks with their concepts as the background for my teaching. Adult and returning students figured infrequently within the graduate curriculum. (56-57)

My students are my contemporaries: their average age is thirty-seven. Some are older than I am; few are younger. These studetns are returning to college after years in the work force or in th ehome; many have considerable work experience; some hold major corporate responsibilities. A decade ago, Lynn Troyka offered a generic description that is still valid: returning students are older, are often the first generation to go on to college, are often parents. Most have full-time jobs and many are women now returning to the academy. (253). While K. Patricia Cross reminds us of the hazards of generic descriptions, because of the diversity at work within this broad category, my own experience suggests that the majority have had some contact with the academy after high school (many have completed a series of courses but have not been able to complete degree requirements) and have long looked for a way to continue their studies that offers the least interference with their daily lives. Increasing numbers of women among my students (many of whom are single parents with primary responsibility for their chidlren's welfare) are unable to take time out to go to class once or twice a week. (57)

...prior learning is especially important when working with students who have already accumulated some thirty years of learning. As a group, these students are interested in finding connections between their past experience and the lessons to be gained by entering the academy...Most adult learners, in fact, seek out and find material within their studies that can be transported back to their home or work environments to help them make better sense of of the experiences they face. (60)

How, then, do we work with adult students? What can we offer them as a strategy for breaking out of traditional student roles? How do we break our own pedagogical bonds? (60)

Yet for all our careful focus on Jane's initiation into the discourse of the academy and into the disciplinary approach to her program (notions based on Perry's developmental scheme), she wavered in her attention to the demands of discipline-based academic writing. Her work in Educational Planning was strong because of the focus on her own voice; her contract studies in comparative democratic systems undertaken in tandem with Educational Planning was more problematic because she was asked to conform to the conventions of political science. She disliked reading and rebelled against the demands for analysis. At the halfway point of her contract, it was clear that Jane would not complete her work. Although she talked about completing it, she had effectively halted her work, and she soon announced her intention to drop the contract, saying she would come back once she was more settled. That was one year ago. I have not heard from her since. (66)