Teaching in Adult Education

Many adult education teachers' lack extensive formal training

, and teaching adults often is not their career of choice. Many will not remain in the field for long, and this high turnover should come as no surprise given the working conditions in most programs, where over-reliance on volunteer and part-time instruction, anemic salaries, and lack of comprehensive benefits, paid prep time, and release time for professional development erode teachers' willingness to invest in curricular Breitling Replica Watches development and contribute to teachers' decision to leave the field all together.

For teachers, full or part time, committed to adult education as a career, certain programmatic policies can limit curricular development and innovation. Smith and Hofer (2003) found that programmatic and state mandates as well as individual interpretive differences as to what the term "learner-centered" actually means seriously hamper development of curriculum based on students' goals and interests. Nearly half the teachers in their study are required to use prepackaged curriculatypically commercial workbooks while the rest rely on piecemeal curricula, adaptations of their own and others' lesson plans. "Rarely," the authors noted, "did we see teachers create curriculum based on the specific literacy or language goals, needs, and practices of the students with whom they worked" (p. 24).

Regardless of the curricular constraints or liberties, all teachers identify the students' own needs and goals as "the driving force" in determining what they teach in the classroom. Not surprisingly, interpretations of "participatory" or "learner-centered" curricula are by no means homogenous. Whereas the researchers understand these terms to refer to the extent to which "teachers and students together decide the 'what' and 'how' of what will be covered in the classroom," teachers' understandings range from flexibility and sensitivity to students' interests "as they arose during class" to individualized instruction "tailored to the pace and needs of each student" (p. 26). Many of these teachers identify their classrooms as participatory or learner-centered, yet they follow a traditional, prescriptive model of instruction.

This understandable discrepancy between practice and perception is evident in Lana's program. Her primary teacher, Susan, shows interest in and is generally supportive of Lana's desire to write for personal reasons, but the realities of her classroomthe diversity of students' educational needsforce her to rely on more traditional approaches, namely walking students through commercially Breitling Replica produced workbooks and practice GED exams. In addition, certain programmatic policies concerning student enrollment and placement conspire against more learner-centered, student-generated approaches. These policieswhat Beder and Medina (2001) labeled key "shaping factors"include mixed grouping, where students with varying degrees of ability and educational need are placed in the same class, and continuous enrollment, where students can join the class at any time, are common to many adult education programs and can disrupt teachers' efforts to develop approaches that build on students' interests and goals in balance with more traditional goals.

Teaching in Adult Education

By: FIRELEAVES

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