‘We’re not the only ones learning here’-- an investigation of co-tutoring and the dynamics of power within a class of adult dyslexics.
Barbara Taylor, University of Nottingham, UK.
Paper presented at SCUTREA, 30th Annual Conference, 3-5 July 2000, University of Nottingham
Introduction: the research context
‘We’re not the only ones learning here’: this quotation was taken from the learning diary of one of the students on the very first Learning for life and work course and records his surprise, and I think, delight, as he realised that the tutors were learners too. As experienced adult educators we are used to the idea that the adults we teach can, and do, contribute much of the teaching that goes on in the classroom. And many of our experienced adult students are also accustomed to this. However, when the classes are ‘targeted at disadvantaged groups’(HEFCE, 1995) who are mostly new to adult classes, it is important to question what effect this perception has; particularly when their previous educational experiences have been teacher dominated and, generally speaking, far from happy.1 When, to quote one student, ‘after a while at school, I came to believe it. Came to believe what my teachers were telling me, that I was thick and useless.’ Another said, ‘the attitude I got from the teachers was that it wasn’t worth me trying’ and a third commented: ‘they know best, they’re the teachers…’
As a group, people with disabilities are under-represented in higher education institutes and these students, describing their exclusion from education during their school years, are all dyslexic adults. They took part in a series of non-accredited courses organised by the University of Nottingham as part of a project funded by HEFCE which aimed to encourage participation in higher education by providing ‘privileged’ access for groups of people with disabilities. The classes under investigation in this essay were adapted specifically for dyslexic students from a study skills course typical to those taken by mature students planning to go on to university. In a deliberate attempt to remove barriers to participation the courses were all open access and free of charge; the only criteria for admission was that putative students must have a disability and in most of the groups the disability was similar. Thus the students were invited to work within ‘discrete’ groups, without the anxieties they might otherwise feel as the only disabled student in the classroom.
This was very significant: we need to bear in mind that Rocco and West (1998, 174) identify disability as the foremost among eight categories for discrimination and that other research by Johnston-Bailey and Cervero (1998) demonstrates that the adult classroom is a microcosm of the real world, mirroring its power struggles. Therefore we cannot always assume that the usual adult classroom will offer an appropriate environment for disabled students. Here, because of the specific funding, we were able to create a different environment where the students could find a safe haven. Dale and Green (1998) have dubbed this type of provision --a course provided exclusively for students with disabilities --‘exclusive provision’ and, using evidence from this and other courses within the same programme, have argued that the students feel secure in a classroom with other people who share their disability.
Even with ‘exclusive provision’ alone we have gone some way towards creating a parallel universe where, instead of the disabled student being the odd one out it is the able-bodied tutor who is ‘different’, thus subtly altering the dynamics of power within the classroom. Once they are the majority within the classroom, the disabled students potentially can set the agenda without fear of preventing the non-disabled students from making progress (Ash, 1997). However in the majority of the Learning for life and work courses, which were a joint venture between Nottingham University and the Nottinghamshire Dyslexia Association, we added another unusual feature--instead of having one tutor there were two, one from the university and one from the Dyslexia Association. Significantly, one of the tutors was also dyslexic.
This paper investigates the effects of these two dramatic changes, exclusivity and co-tutoring, in the adult classroom by using the themes of mastery, voice, authority and positionality found in previous research on classroom power dynamics by both Maher and Tetreault (1994) and Johnson-Bailey and Cervero (1998). The themes are defined as:
Mastery: in the educational setting refers to understanding the material covered in the course and amassing individual or collaborative knowledge.
Voice: refers to the students' ability to speak and more importantly to their degree of comfort in speaking.
Authority: refers to the examination of the traditional concept of the teacher as the power figure and the students as the governed.
Positionality: refers to the place one occupies within the societal hierarchy and is usually defined by the major categories of gender, class, sexual orientation or disability ( Johnson-Bailey and Cervero, 1998).
The research material is drawn from the transcription of three lengthy focus group meetings with seven of the students, together with the personal learning journals and statements of learning of the wider student group, also from tutor journals and lesson plans as well as classroom observation. It therefore permits us to hear both the tutors’ reflections and the students’ own voices.
Mastery
understanding the material covered in the course and amassing individual or collaborative knowledge.
In the context of this course there were two different areas of knowledge where the students were required to gain mastery; one of these was an awareness of the demands that future study would make upon them and a range of techniques that would enable them cope with these demands. The other area of knowledge was of dyslexia itself and specific strategies for dyslexic students. Both tutors were convinced that knowledge about dyslexia and how it affected them as individuals was as important for the students as the techniques of study. Although the tutor from the Dyslexia Association was used to working with dyslexic school students and teaching them study skills, she had little experience of these skills in higher education while the other tutor had considerable experience in working with adults in this field. However she had less knowledge of the second area of expertise, dyslexia; thus both tutors were interdependent.
The practical implication of this for the classroom situation was that teaching sessions were shared, with the different tutors contributing their particular area of knowledge. Thus the major part of the first session of each course was taken by the dyslexic tutor who gave a presentation explaining the history of our growing understanding of dyslexia and the ways in which it affected people. During this same session, the other tutor, myself, presented the outline of the course and negotiated what we would cover with the students. Therefore from the outset, the mastery of the material was perceived to be shared: one tutor knew about dyslexia, the other knew about the demands of the university.
This pattern was repeated throughout the courses with the tutors taking turn and turn about to present material, one taking centre stage at the front of the class while the other sat alongside the students. Sometimes the ‘spare’ tutor worked with the students, responding to individual needs for clarification or acting as a scribe and at other times she openly learned a new technique from the other. We had deliberately adopted a multi-sensory teaching approach, wherever possible, and provided the formal teaching through visual materials, handouts containing both verbal and diagrammatic information, which were read aloud to the students and the strategies they described were demonstrated so that the process could be followed. Sometimes the ‘teacher’ would be aware of the students’ anxiety--at times their panic was palpable--and, having exhausted her own attempts to find an explanation which they could follow, would appeal to the other for help. The students remarked on this: ‘You kept saying help to each other, didn’t you?’. But they found it useful:
I think it made it easier, it did for me anyway, to understand what you were saying, Barbara. I was taking it in, because I’d got that panic, I don’t quite understand but, look at Vanessa’s face or ask Vanessa to put it in a way I can understand it….if you like Vanessa was our interpreter, not that you were hard to understand, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just that sort of thing, it works, having both, getting the information we’ve come for off that part of the course and Vanessa is there to sort of say, yes, I know what you mean, it’s done this way. (Suzanne,1st focus group)
The active teaching role would thus pass back and forward between the tutors as they sought for the best way to convey the information. Importantly, this device defused the potential tension in the situation and allowed the tutors to assume responsibility for the students’ lack of understanding. In addition, as one or other of the tutors was generally seated amongst the students, we all became accustomed to hearing a teaching voice issue from the student group.
As the courses were repeated several times, responsibility for a specific part of the teaching would move from one tutor to the other. For example, in one session I was demonstrating a mapping technique which my partner had taught in the previous course but she interrupted to correct me as I had mis-remembered a significant detail of the layout. The ease with which one tutor could point out the other’s mistake and the other accept the correction was an important part of the teaching process demonstrating that the tutors can make mistakes and learn from them without embarrassment. This was particularly significant for a group of students who were accustomed to hiding their own literacy difficulties.
Voice
Voice: refers to the students' ability to speak and more importantly to their degree of comfort in speaking.
Here, as Dale and Taylor (2000) have noted, ‘exclusive provision’ in itself provides a safe place for the participants to explore their insecurities. One student wrote in her personal statement of learning:
I have had the chance to ask many questions which may not be appropriate to general study groups, but within the companionship of a group of dyslexic people I have found that many questions asked and answered have been useful in expanding knowledge and sharing experience which have got people through life this far.
Co-tutoring added a further dimension to the situation; the easy relationship between the two tutors fostered a friendly atmosphere. Karen described it thus: ‘One’s doing something and the other one’s commenting and it just makes life easy, you know, one will be writing on the board and the other one mocking her.’ Another student remarked, ‘the fact that Barbara and Vanessa were very sort of relaxed people, and again we come back to the point of not being talked at…..it was more that you were being helped than you were being taught’(3rd focus group). He went on to say, ‘they were very approachable all the time’. Another said: ‘if you needed advice on something you’d got, like assignments or anything, you could always bring them and they would give you some ideas’.
As I mentioned earlier, we were all accustomed to hearing a teaching voice from the student group and, on occasion, the best tutor for the group was one of the students themselves. For example, in the penultimate course while we were working as a group to create an essay plan (we were tackling a ‘compare and contrast’ question), one student, Ivan, was very vocal about his conviction that he could never move from a simple essay plan. Although I could show him that there was more than one way of writing the essay and assure him that even the simple strategy of presenting all the positive points in the first part of the essay and then the negative points before drawing a conclusion would be acceptable, he remained dissatisfied. But another student, John, currently completing an honours degree, took over the teaching. He recalled making this progression himself and was able to encourage Ivan to believe that, with practice, it was possible to develop what he recognised as a more sophisticated style of writing.
Authority
Authority: refers to the examination of the traditional concept of the teacher as the power figure and the students as the governed
As we have already noted, the shared responsibility for the course material created some re-distribution of power within the class for instead of having one focus of knowledge, mastery of the material was held by the two tutors. The tutors’ authority was further unsettled by the administrative arrangements of the course for, realising that completing complex enrolment forms would form a barrier to dyslexic students joining the course in the first place, there was no requirement of prior enrolment. Instead students were invited just to turn up. Thus the tutors had no idea of the numbers of students they were expecting nor their names or their prior education experience. The absence of all these details placed the tutors at something of a disadvantage. For instance, instead of the twelve people who had telephoned to book a place for the first meeting of the first course, there were twenty eight students.
In addition the tutors had no previous experience of teaching together and neither of them had worked with large groups of dyslexic adults before. They made no secret of this and, explaining that the course was new, invited the students to take part in the experiment with them. In the third focus group Nick, who had been present on that occasion, remarked: ‘it was very clear during the first course that you were learning as much as we were because you didn’t know what you were doing.’ When he was asked whether this had made him less confident, he replied: ‘No, it comes back to the fact that it wasn’t so intimidating in that way because you’re not being talked at, you’re being talked to. And essentially everyone was in the same boat including the tutors and it does make it less intimidating.’ He went on to say, ‘It’s nice not to have someone standing there saying “I know more than you do so you will listen.”’
The students stressed that having two tutors who talked to them rather than at them was very important. One commented that ‘there wasn’t that separation’ between the tutors and the group; another that ‘you were all on one level’, and a third that ‘this was more even, someone was talking to me, not over my head.’ It was, to quote Nick again, ‘a much more comfortable relationship’. However, when questioned, they were insistent that both tutors, the dyslexic and the non-dyslexic, were essential components of the team; the course would not work as well with either just a dyslexic tutor or a non-dyslexic tutor. Suzanne said:
We need the extra, to show us a way of looking at life the way some people see it through Barbara, but if there’s a bit of it we can’t grasp, well Vanessa had got an idea, with being dyslexic and with being a teacher as well, of what we’re trying to get at and she puts it a different way round. So we’re getting the knowledge, we’re getting the best of both worlds really. (3rd focus group)
Another student, Karen, added: ‘I think it doesn’t matter how brilliant you are, being dyslexic you’re still missing out…I know what I want to say but I can’t put it down and unless you’re brilliant or non dyslexic, you still have that problem.’ Nick added, ‘ I think, very much based on what Karen is saying, that the two of you together make one whole. One of you on your own would be an incomplete teaching team for us’
Positionality
Positionality: refers to the place one occupies within the societal hierarchy and is usually defined by the major categories of gender, class, sexual orientation or disability.
The students’ previous experience was of being excluded from the classroom because of their disability. One student noted: ‘I was put into this block called the remedial block….for people who had difficulties and things’(1st focus group). Another commented ‘when I was in secondary school I was in a special needs class because I was dyslexic and I got the feeling that there was a general attitude that if you were dyslexic you were mentally deficient or mentally ill’ (1st focus group). Now the position was reversed for in this course the only reason they could gain admittance was their dyslexia.
The experiment of creating a student body where all the students shared a disability subverted their usual expectations of being the odd one out and the ones who had to hide their difficulties. Instead the non-dyslexic tutor was the 'different' member of the group and on occasion felt distinctly isolated. Interestingly this feeling of isolation and disadvantage was shared by the other non-dyslexic, the partner of one of the students who joined the class to support her . His personal statement of learning noted: 'Almost felt inadequate not being dyslexic' (Ross, 1998). Thus the exclusive nature of the group was affirming for the students.