Learning and literacies: telling stories and writing lives
Lyn Tett
University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Paper presented at SCUTREA 34th Annual Conference, University of Sheffield, UK. 6-8 July 2004
Introduction
Currently the value of learning in adulthood is recognised by a wide variety of governments and educational bodies through a commitment to policies that promote ‘lifelong learning’. These policies aim to develop the individual’s capacity for learning across the life span and assume that people can learn in many different ways and contexts. The corollary of these expectations is that if the society that people live in regards learning as a normal activity for people of all ages then everyone, rather than a limited group, is likely to be effectively engaged in some form of learning of their choice. Participation in post school education and training in the UK, however, is a highly classed activity with those from social classes IV and V unlikely to continue their education and those from social classes I and II over-represented, particularly in Higher Education (see Archer et al, 2003). Since those who leave school with few or no qualifications are unlikely to engage in learning later, even informal learning, it appears that if you do not succeed in the first place then you will not succeed later either.
So, although the commitment of governments to lifelong learning is to be welcomed, it is important that ways are found of disentangling the emphasis on economic skills development and individual learning that has permeated these policies. For example a European Union policy paper argued that the aims of lifelong learning ‘are dependent on [citizens] having adequate and up-to-date knowledge and skills to take part in and make a contribution to economic and social life’ (CEC, 2000, p.5). The British Prime minister has similarly argued that ‘Education is the best economic policy we have’ (Blair, 1998). Permeating the lifelong learning discourse, then, is an emphasis on the individual, isolated learner and the main aim is to focus on increasing people’s skills and employability. This emphasis can exclude the very people it is hoped will re-engage in learning as they see themselves condemned, as John Field (2000) has argued, to a life sentence of undesirable and unwanted education and training.
Part of this shift in national and international policies is that the emphasis is no longer on education as a public good rather it is on learning, which is firmly located in the private domain, and is aligned with a discourse of consumer choice. The moral and political questions about society to which education should contribute are marginalised in this process and learning is seen as a neutral, non-political activity. What is necessary, as Jim Crowther (2000, p.481) points out, is a need to rethink this relationship and instead locate the learner in a context where learning is embedded in social relationships and where the person and the environment they inhabit are seen as mutually constructed and mutually constructing. This is where education and learning that take place in community settings has the potential to engage people in generating new knowledge and ideas that is built on their lived experience.
Literacy
Discussion around adult literacy illustrates the individualising discourse of lifelong learning policies very clearly. Learning is seen as an individual choice so adults who have failed to learn ‘the basics’ are viewed as deficit individuals (see Crowther et al, 2001). This means that they are castigated for not choosing to learn and viewed as not even vaguely motivated to do something about their own plight. This deficit form of literacy does not encourage deep learning; rather it leaves people feeling less confident and capable. Moreover, the policy emphasis is on the huge scale of the ‘literacy problem’ which suggests that there is an inadequate mass of people in need of help. Despite the new rhetoric of social inclusion and citizen participation, the vision that drives the literacy agenda is the need for global economic competitiveness. The imperative is to create a skilled workforce and an active consumer, rather than an informed citizen. It is based on a top-down view of literacy where need is defined for learners rather than negotiated with them on the basis of their perceived desires.
An alternative to this discourse is provided by programmes that are grounded in the life situations of adults and communities. This type of approach responds to issues that are derived from people’s own interests and knowledge of the world and are much more likely to encourage learning that has value (see Barton and Hamilton, 1998). This means that, rather than seeing literacy and numeracy as the decontextualised, mechanical, manipulation of letters, words and figures, instead literacies are located within the social, emotional and linguistic contexts that give them meaning. From this perspective reading and writing are complex cognitive activities that integrate feelings, values, routines, skills, understandings, and activities and depend on a great deal of contextual (i.e. social) knowledge and intention (see Merrifield, 2001). For example, someone reading the main news story in a newspaper is not just decoding words but also using knowledge of the conventions of newspaper writing, of the local/national focus, the political and philosophical orientation of the newspaper. In fact they are 'reading between the lines'. In the same way, adults in a supermarket are not just using number skills when doing price comparisons but also taking into account their prior experience with the brands, family likes and dislikes, and perhaps ethical concerns (Fair Trade etc.).
Community based learning approaches provide opportunities to develop an agenda that aims to extend the autonomy of individuals and communities that have been marginalised and ignored. In this case the emphasis is shifted from literacy as a deficit in people to an examination of the literacy practices that people engage in that recognises difference and diversity and regards different ways of thinking and communicating as assets not deficits. The deficit, if there is one to be located, is in a society that excludes, reduces and ridicules the rich means of communication that exist amongst its people. Individualistic curricula reinforce the view that failure to learn is the fault of the individual, so it is important to provide an alternative perspective based on a sense of social purpose that is grounded in real lives and real learning practices. This requires an emphasis on how people use literacy rather than why other people think they need these skills (see Tett and Crowther, 1998).
It is vital to remember that the setting, however informal, does not necessarily lead to different practices. The agenda for developing literacies has to be informed by issues of social justice, equality, and democracy in everyday life if an alternative model of learning that places the emphasis on how adults can and want to use literacy is to be developed. This would mean that the focus moves to what people have, rather than what they lack, what motivates them rather than what is seen as something they need. Approaches are required that open up, expose and counteract the institutional processes and professional mystique whereby dominant forms of literacy are placed beyond question. They have to challenge the way ‘literacy’ is socially distributed to different groups. The learning and teaching process needs to be reconstructed so that students are seen as equal in social and political terms. This involves using the literacy practices of everyday life in the curriculum so that the home and community life of participants is positively valued. Extending the autonomy of individuals and communities that have been marginalised and ignored comes about through an examination of the literacies practices that people engage in that recognises difference and diversity and challenges how these differences are viewed in society. Literacy and numeracy are essentially social practices that are embedded in a variety of different social, emotional and linguistic contexts. It is therefore important to find out from learners about their learning experiences in the many aspects of their lives.
An empowering curriculum
A family literacy project developed in a socio-economically-marginalised area of Edinburgh has made a useful contribution to shifting the way that the literacy ‘problem’ has been defined (see Heywood, 2000). The curriculum developed involved the recognition that some people are at a disadvantage because of the ways in which a particular literacy is used in dominant institutions. ‘The culture children learn as they grow up is, in fact, "ways of taking" meaning from the environment around them' (Heath, 1983, p. 49) and not a 'natural' way of behaving. The project made sure that the social practices of the school and other institutions, and the language and literacy they reinforce, were made visible to show that they represent a selection from a wider range of possibilities - none of which are neutral. These practices then became a critical resource for learning and literacy. An important issue here was the use of Scots for everyday language and literacy. As the Scottish Consultative Council on the Curriculum (1996, p.15) has pointed out, since Scots is the language of the home for many people, it provides speakers with their first awareness of themselves and their relationships. Use of the language also helps people to:
Establish their own sense of values, and [is] closely involved in the development of thinking skills, and those related, equally important, worlds of feeling and social consciousness. Neglecting Scots has, therefore, unwelcome social and personal consequences.
An important ‘unwelcome consequence’ that is easily internalised is that the language of people’s homes and communities is only of value within a very limited range of social contexts. An investigation carried out by Alan Addison in relation to this asked adult literacy students ‘Dae ye speak Scots or slang?’ and nearly 70% of the students responded ‘I speak slang’. He points out, ‘if a community’s means of communication and self expression are perceived by themselves to be inferior how then does that reflect on their self-image and confidence?’ (Addison, 2001, p.156). If the language and literacy of the home and community is unacknowledged or actively suppressed then it becomes difficult for people to say what is important to them in ways that are meaningful. People become voiceless by not being allowed to speak, or only being allowed to say what has already been said by others and so they eventually learn how to silence themselves. As long as people remain voiceless with their own lived experience interpreted on their behalf by others then their own meanings are rendered illegitimate and disqualified.
The project included the literacy practices of everyday life in the curriculum so that the home and community life of participants was positively valued. Students kept a log of their own reading and writing practices and also interviewed others about their role as readers and writers in the family. Recognising and working on actual literacy practices provided an appropriate starting point for the curriculum because it grounded educational intervention in real literacy concerns and everyday life. This included challenging assumptions about the homogeneity of reading and writing practices since the wide variation in the group's experiences and the influence of gender, ethnicity and class on what was considered 'normal' was revealed through their discussions. The project staff also focused on developing critical language awareness through enabling learners to see language and the reading of texts as problematic. This involved, for example, collecting texts that the participants came across in everyday use from a range of genres (advertisements, newspapers, letters from school, bills, cereal packets, 'junk mail', and family photograph albums) to work on as a group. They were asked to identify: to whom the text was primarily addressed; who produced it; why it was interesting and what message the producer was trying to get across so that they could see that all writing was created for a particular purpose. Such decoding challenged the participants’ taken-for-granted assumptions that there was just one form of writing and helped them to see that the writing that they created could vary in form too.
Student-led investigations, which involved taking Polaroid photographs of a range of public writing including graffiti, public notices, shop signs, posters, and then coming together to decode these pictures, enabled discussion to take place about the concerns in the community and the messages that were presented to them. Both these approaches enabled the participants to see the ways in which literacy is constructed in different contexts and for different purposes and led to lively discussions. Two examples were the prevalence of racism in the community as revealed through graffiti on the walls of the houses and how the manufacturers of breakfast cereals assumed particular family life-styles.
Really useful learning
The project is also an important reminder of the value of using the non-formal learning that had been developed by the group and was controlled by them to create a curriculum. This learning has been linked into the formal learning, which is substantially controlled by the institutional provider who has to show what outcomes have been achieved. Informal learning from experience that occurs within the privacy of personal and family relationships has also made an important contribution to the curriculum as the participants have brought their own ideas into the programme. The value of such learning where people attach meaning and significance to shared experiences and common understandings with others is an important corrective to the assumption that learning is little other than a marketable commodity to be dispensed by others. Informal learning provides a reminder that learners have social agency that enables them to engage in the dynamic process of making sense of complicated lives in a variety of contexts and different circumstances. By linking this kind of learning into more formal contexts people can make sense of some of this experience and add new and different knowledge. It also puts learners back at the heart of learning, as the subjects of learning rather than the objects of educational interventions that are supposed to be good for them. If learners are positioned as experienced and knowledgeable social actors then they become active players rather than passive recipients of education. Learning then becomes a shared endeavour between tutors and students, a two-way, rather than a one-way, process.