Teaching and Practice: Composing Texts, Composing Lives

1994 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sondra Perl

In this article, Sondra Perl draws on the work of theorists in composition studies, reader response theory, critical pedagogy, and feminist studies to explicate a pedagogy that incorporates her own learning and development with that of her adult students. She emphasizes not only the importance of her students' responding critically to various literary texts, but also the importance of teachers' critically analyzing the texts of their teaching practice. Perl asserts that a classroom of adult learners has the potential to be a supportive milieu in which both students and teachers use writing as a way of brining their own experience to their interpretation of texts. In this way, Perl believes, students and teachers alike author their coming together, and the classroom becomes a site in which they compose not only texts, but also themselves.

Author(s):  
А.А. Palina ◽  
◽  
T.A. Kokhanover ◽  

This article highlights issues of formation a motivation to learn foreign languages in adult students. The teaching practice shows that working with students of different ages has its own distinctive features, and teaching adults has its own specifics. This article considers such element of educational activity as motivation, and particularities of its formation namely in adults. It presents the basic learning needs of adults, their requirements for the pedagogical process, as well as possible difficulties in teaching them. It provides the list of conditions and principles necessary for successful development and maintenance of adult students’ motivation. The article suggests such method as correspondence with native speakers of a foreign language. It describes the conduct of experimental training using the proposed method, which is supported by the results of a survey to identify the level of adult students’ motivation.


2014 ◽  
pp. 1252-1280
Author(s):  
Karen Skibba

The purpose of this chapter is to share results of a qualitative research study that investigated how faculty members learn to teach adult learners using online course delivery. In this study, experienced faculty members needed to learn anew and rethink pedagogical strategies when designing and teaching online delivery formats. Faculty members who are learning to teach are also adult learners who learn through experience. Research themes emerged from interviews regarding how instructors learned to teach adult learners online: (a) adapted to market demand, (b) anchored by adult learning strategies, (c) experimented in online laboratory, (d) evolved from trial and error to collaboration, and (e) rethought pedagogical possibilities. Understanding how faculty members learn to teach adult students online offers great potential to identify the challenges that faculty members face and how they meet these challenges to improve teaching practice. Implications for online professional development practices are discussed.


2012 ◽  
pp. 263-291
Author(s):  
Karen Skibba

The purpose of this chapter is to share results of a qualitative research study that investigated how faculty members learn to teach adult learners using online course delivery. In this study, experienced faculty members needed to learn anew and rethink pedagogical strategies when designing and teaching online delivery formats. Faculty members who are learning to teach are also adult learners who learn through experience. Research themes emerged from interviews regarding how instructors learned to teach adult learners online: (a) adapted to market demand, (b) anchored by adult learning strategies, (c) experimented in online laboratory, (d) evolved from trial and error to collaboration, and (e) rethought pedagogical possibilities. Understanding how faculty members learn to teach adult students online offers great potential to identify the challenges that faculty members face and how they meet these challenges to improve teaching practice. Implications for online professional development practices are discussed.


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-68
Author(s):  
Mark Byron

Scholarly research over the last twenty years has marked a profound shift in the understanding of Beckett's sources, his methods of composition, and his attitudes towards citation and allusion in manuscript documents and published texts. Such landmark studies as James Knowlson's biography, Damned to Fame (1996), and John Pilling's edition of the Dream Notebook (1999), and the availability of primary documents such as Beckett's reading notes at Reading and Trinity libraries, opened the way for a generation of work rethinking Beckett's textual habitus. Given this profound reappraisal of Beckett's material processes of composition, this paper seeks to show that Beckett's late prose work, Worstward Ho, represents a profound mediation on writing, self-citation, and habits of allusion to the literary canon. In its epic gestures, it reorients the heavenly aspiration of Dante's Commedia earthwards, invoking instead the language of agriculture, geology and masonry in the process of creating and decreating its imaginative space. Beckett's earthy epic invokes and erodes the first principles of narrative by way of philology as well as by means of deft reference to literary texts and images preoccupied with land, farming, and geological formations. This process is described in the word corrasion, a geological term referring to the erosion of rock by various forms of water, ice, snow and moraine. Textual excursions into philology in Worstward Ho also unearth the strata comprising Beckett's corpus (in particular Imagination Dead Imagine, The Lost Ones, and Ill Seen Ill Said), as well as the rock or canon upon which his own literary production is built. A close reading of Worstward Ho turns up a number of shrewd allusions to the King James Bible and Thomas Browne, as one might expect, but also perhaps surprisingly sustained affinities with the literary sensibilities of Alexander Pope and the poetry of S. T. Coleridge. The more one digs, the more Beckett's ‘little epic’ seems to become one of earthworks, bits of pipe, and masonry, a site and record of literary sedimentation.


ZDM ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (5) ◽  
pp. 1073-1084 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Jaworski ◽  
Despina Potari

AbstractThis paper addresses implementation with respect to the professional development (PD) of teachers of mathematics and the educators/didacticians who work with them, through an inquiry-based developmental model. In contrast with a PD model in which educators show, guide or instruct teachers in classroom approaches and mathematical tasks, we present a developmental model in which teachers and educators collaborate to inquire into and develop their own teaching practice. The project, Learning Communities in Mathematics (LCM: e.g., Goodchild, Fuglestad and Jaworski, 2013) exemplifies this developmental model. Here we focus on a project Teaching Better Mathematics (TBM) which extends LCM and implements its developmental model at larger scale. We trace the implementation process through analysis of data gathered during and after the extended project, including written reflections of key didacticians, minutes from leadership meetings and two versions of the project proposal. Particularly, we trace learning and development through an activity theory analysis of the issues, tensions and contradictions experienced by participation in TBM.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104515952098836
Author(s):  
Alexander C. Gardner ◽  
Heather N. Maietta ◽  
Philip D. Gardner ◽  
Niki Perkins

This study sought to fill a gap in the literature by considering the role of motivation in post-secondary aspirations of adult learners, specifically full versus part-time status, previous level of educational attainment, years of work experience, and the selection of an academic program. The data from this study came from adult students ages 25 and older at 8 institutions in the Midwest. Statistical analysis determined there were significant differences in gender motivation, level of education is predictive of type of educational credential being pursued, and type of adult learner motivation influences which degree, academic program, and enrollment status is pursued by adult learners. Furthermore, this research revealed as adults acquire more work experience, their postsecondary educational aspirations are more likely motivated by extrinsic factors. These findings have meaningful implications for linking motivation with continuance and graduation from collegiate programs for which this paper identifies and discusses in the context of postsecondary education.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147797142199278
Author(s):  
Charlie Potter

Adult students are critical to addressing the college completion crisis. Retention and completion for adults lags behind students who enter college directly from high school. However, higher education has largely been built around service to younger high school graduates, and institutions are slow to change. A shift in focus to accommodate the needs and interests of adult learners will require additional research regarding the enrollment patterns and behaviours of adult students. This study uses quantitative methods and the Beginning Postsecondary Students 12/14 dataset to consider the role of transfer in the experience of the adult learner, with specific attention to the characteristics, demographics and experiences of adult transfer students as well as the predictors of reverse and lateral transfer behaviour in adult student populations.


Author(s):  
Jessica Miles

Adult education tools have transformed over the years to become very Internet-based. Distance education courses represent one of the fastest-growing sectors within higher education and as an elected form of education for adult learners. Nontraditional students play an important role in the continued growth of this educational modality and are using distance education courses to further their knowledge, skills, and careers. Additionally, this tool is enabling adults who might otherwise be unable to participate in learning opportunities because they are place-bound to have access to a wealth of information and courses available through distance education courses. In regards to adult health, research has identified potential impacts on academic success including sleep quality and external responsibilities, such as work and caretaking. Nontraditional, adult students are increasingly pressured with greater external responsibilities that in turn may affect their sleep quality, creating a sort of chain reaction of potential academic obstacles. Raising awareness of these health issues and impacts is important in setting up adult learners, especially those taking distance education courses, with the greatest opportunities for academic success. This chapter explores distance education.


Author(s):  
Simona Laurian-Fitzgerald ◽  
Carlton J. Fitzgerald ◽  
Carmen Alina Popa ◽  
Laura Bochis

Adult learners are different from younger learners. Many have taken Knowles' ideas to work with adult learners as if they all are the same. Knowles described adult learners as more self-directed, willing to be responsible for what they do, unwilling to have teachers impose arbitrary information on them, ready to learn, task oriented, and experienced. Prather adds many adults have more immediate goals for their lives and careers. Kenner and Weinerman find adults want more collaborative relationships with professors. Adult students are unique and come to classes from a variety of backgrounds and circumstances, with different needs, wants, and learning preferences. Many students are prepared for college, while others are petrified. In this chapter, the authors argue that instructors should understand their students in order to help them be successful. Students are not alternative students; they are normal, intelligent people who can and will learn. Thus, the goal should be student-centered online learning.


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