liberation or reproduction

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Liberation or reproduction: exploring meaning in collegestudents' adult literacy tutoringLinda Ziegahn

Online Publication Date: 01 January 1999

To cite this Article: Ziegahn, Linda (1999) 'Liberation or reproduction: exploringmeaning in college students' adult literacy tutoring', International Journal ofQualitative Studies in Education, 12:1, 85 101

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QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION, 1999, VOL. 12, NO. 1, 85 101

Liberation or reproduction : exploring meaning incollege students adult literacy tutoring

LINDA ZIEGAHNThe McGregor School, Antioch University

KATHLEEN A. HINCHMANSchool of Education, Syracuse University

The purpose of this paper is to explore the voices of college-level literacy tutors as they come tounderstand their work with less literate adults. The design of th is inquiry began within thephenomenological traditions of symbolic interactionism (Blumer, 1969). Qualitative datagathered included eld notes, interview transcrip ts, and student journals. Initial analysis resultedin categories that represented concrete aspects of the tutoring experience. Analysis also revealedthat a large part of tutors attention was spent in considering their own position relative to thosewith whom they worked : d iscovering how they learned best as a base for considering the learningof others, negotiating an educational role with adult learners, and identifying their place in theworld of educational ` ` haves and ` ` have-nots. Some of the tutors words suggested anawakening to inequities throughout the educational system, which pushed the analysis into amore interpretive arena (Denzin, 1989 ; Schwandt, 1994). Initial categories were reconsidered todevelop a larger cultural representation of tutor success and literacy. Students interpretationswere further contrasted with the theories of critical pedagogues and with educational practice,both in literacy education sites and in university classrooms. Suggestions are made as to why thereis a lack of connection between critical theories and practice at the levels of both basic and highereducation.

Introduction

Literacy enhancement has been described by some as the tool through which the social,political, and economic fabric of community life can be challenged (Freire, 1970, 1985).However, such transformative goals do not appear to match those of the morepragmatic adult literacy programs of most public schools and not-for-pro torganizations in the United States (Mezirow, Darkenwald, & Knox, 1975). Instead,programs are concerned with developing adults beginning reading skills or helpingthem to gain high school credentials, and program success is determined by enrollment,improvement in reading skills, or diploma achievement. Despite the frequent use ofdramatic personal stories in fundraising e orts, personal and societal transformationsare not usually considered indications of success. Perpetually underfunded, suchprograms regularly look to community volunteers for assistance (Freer, 1995 ; Ilsley,1989).

College students often turn to literacy tutoring as a means of enhancing theirintellectual, moral, ethical, and personal development (Kendall, 1990 ; Thorpe, Allen,& Shearer, 1992). While their interest in this service seems to provide a productivematch between need and resources, the nature of such communion is less clear. Collegestudents live in a climate that represents ` ` an intersection of social mobilities [where]

International J ournal of Qualitative Studies in EducationISSN 0951-8398 print } ISSN 1366-5898 online 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltd

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86 linda ziegahn and kathleen a. hinchman

people come and go, bringing with them all kinds of energy, ideas, interests,backgrounds, aspirations and projections (Goldberg, 1994, p. 24). Thus, their lives aredi erent from those of their literacy learners, and both college students and literacylearners are likely to realize these di erences as they work together. In workingtogether, both have the chance to change their own life circumstances, to cross borders,in the words of Giroux (1992) college students by experiencing the struggles of adultliteracy learners and adult literacy learners by gaining skills and credentials of increasedcontrol and access. However, how do college students perceive their experiences asliteracy tutors? How do they understand their literacy learners and the circumstancesof their lives ? How do the perspectives of college students help us to understand theborders between campus and the adult literacy community ?

In the paper which follows, we attempt to represent and interpret the voices ofcollege student-tutors with whom we have worked as they come to understand literacyand their work with less literate adults. We begin with a description of the theoreticalframework for our work, followed by a description of the methodology of our inquiry.Next, we present an explanation of results, described by coding category. Finally, weexplore the problems and possibilities inherent in college students occupation of aborder space between their lives as students and their e orts in the larger community.

Critical literacy and related concepts

Our work is framed by our concern for literacy as a tool of equity and access and for themanner in which we represent individuals struggles to be literate to our own collegestudents. Such concern for critical literacy in particular addresses the contradictionbetween what schools claim they do and what they actually do (Escobar, Fernandez, &Guevara-Niebla with Freire, 1994 ; Freire, 1985, 1990 ; Giroux, 1992, 1994 ; Greene,1986 ; hooks, 1994 ; McLaren & Lankshear, 1993). Such theories can be traced to theProgressive movement of John Dewey (1966 } 1916) and have focused in the latter halfof the 20th century on constructing an active role for basic literacy education in politicaland social development in Latin America and Africa (Freire, 1970 ; Freire & Macedo,1987). Among the tasks of such an approach to education are the revelation andexploration of the consistencies and contradictions in students experiences witheducation (Giroux, 1992) and the development of re ective thought and reconstructiveaction (Brennan, 1987 ; Kirk, 1986 ; Liston & Zeichner, 1987). According to Giroux(1992), one purpose of higher education is to a rm existing views of the world and tocreate new ones, both intensely political and deeply normative. Universities should beabout dreaming of a better world, where educators and students can think criticallyabout how knowledge is produced and transformed in relation to a larger worldcharacterized by asymmetrical power relations : ` ` The language of education thatstudents take with them from their university experience should embody a visioncapable of providing them a sense of history, civic courage, and democratic community (p. 91).

In Giroux s view, then, the role of the educator is to provide students with theopportunity to analyze ways in which the dominant culture creates ` ` borders saturatedin terror, inequality, and forced exclusions (Giroux, 1992, p. 174). It is not enough toallow space for the disenfranchised to be heard. Educators, instead, must lead in theforging of political communities in which di erence and particularity are not contrary

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liberation or reproduction 87

to political unity (Giroux, 1992 ; Mou e, 1988). It means moving beyond merelycelebrating di erence to engaging creatively in a struggle for equality.

[T]he pedagogical borderlands where blacks, whites, latinos, and others meetdemonstrate the importance of a multicentric perspective that allows teachers,cultural workers, and students to not only recognize the multilayered andcontradictory ideologies that construct their own identities but to also analyzehow the di erences within and between various groups can expand the potentialof human life and democratic possibilities. (Giroux, 1992, p. 175)

The borders that are the meeting ground between groups cannot be disassociated fromthe power held by each group. Di erence is never free-standing, nor are di erencesabsolute and intractable. Rather they are socially and culturally relational (McLaren,1994). As Freire (1970) points out, in the dialogue that must take place betweenoppressed and oppressor, some will work to maintain existing structures, others tochange them. As explained by Janmohamed (1994), Freire s pedagogy advocates thenurturing of intellectuals who will cross borders and develop strong antagonisms in theprocess. Caught between the dominant group s practices and the resultant poverty,peasants (in Freire s case of Latin America ; in this study, students, teachers, and literacylearners) turn to an examination of the borders that con ne them. Poverty and abuseare among the social, political, and economic ` ` codi cations, or ` ` knowable objects, that ` ` border intellectuals can break down and put back together again.

Often the peasants with whom Freire has worked over the years learn to read alongwith the decodi cation process. This acquisition of literacy is theorized as an active stepthat redraws the nature of their relationship with the dominant class, including theboundaries that once separated them, leading to the formation of new alliances and areawakening of hope. While literacy programs in the United States are not typicallyorchestrated according to Freirian principle (Mezirow et al., 1975), the people whoenroll in them do so, ostensibly, to gain skills or credentials that will give them access tootherwise inaccessible segments of society. It is by considering such border crossings, asexperienced and observed by our college student-tutors, that we examine the themes ofcollege student tutors considering their own literacy and the literacy of their adultstudents.

Methodology

Methodology for this inquiry led to a two-tiered analysis. Initial inquiry was guided bythe assumption that nding meaning in complex social contexts means trying to gainaccess to the perspectives of the settings participants. Systematic, multilayered study ofwhat people say and do in such settings provides a way to discern meanings that evolvefrom the symbolic interactions within these settings (Blumer, 1969 ; Denzin, 1989).Because they provide the opportunity to capture actions and words over time and frommultiple directions, participant observation, in-depth interviewing, and documentanalysis are consistent with such an interpretive phenomenological perspective.Similarly consistent is constant comparison as a method of analysis and subsequentdevelopment of theory that is grounded in participants views of the setting (Bogdan &Biklen, 1992 ; Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The second phase of our analysis was moreinterpretive (Schwandt, 1994), leading us to the critical literacy literature as we

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grappled with our nal research question relating to the borders between campus andcommunity.

Participan ts

Our roles as teacher-researchers : Our roles in this inquiry were as teachers of a universitycourse in adult literacy education and as researcher-authors of this paper, interested inour students growing perspectives toward literacy and equity. While our inquiry wasnot meant as a direct critique of our pedagogy per se, we realize that we are implicatedas possible sources for at least some of our students perspectives, and we know that ourteaching will necessarily change because of the insights we gain from this work. We alsoknow that our teaching of this practicum-based course has been typical, with a dualconcern for surveying academic terrain and for helping students to be welcomedcomfortably into existing educational institutions. Thus, we think our re exiveinterpretation of our students insights may be helpful to others who nd themselves insimilar situations.

Our work took place at a mid-sized university in the northeast United States. Wetaught a class in adult literacy education together for four semesters to universityundergraduates from a variety of majors. These students served as tutors in adult basiceducation classrooms throughout the community. In these classrooms, literacy learnersworked on basic skills, high school equivalency diplomas, speci c skills for job training,or English pro ciency for primary speakers of other languages. In addition to tutoringfor roughly 60 hours over a semester, undergraduates spent two hours each week in aseminar on adult learning theory and literacy education. During this time, we discussedand critiqued models of adult literacy education ; strategies for helping less literateadults with math, reading, and writing ; questions students brought back to theuniversity classroom from tutoring sites ; and the implications of their work for theirpostgraduate lives.

We especially felt an obligation to prepare our undergraduate students for thedi cult lives that caused many adult students to interrupt their schooling in the rstplace. We felt that a respect for the adult learner meant not perpetuating the various` ` de cits (Fingeret, 1983 ; Ziegahn, 1992) or stigmas that often plague such students.We wanted them to understand, instead, that characterizing learners based on theirproblems would not aid the tutors in helping their own students to learn. Our strategywas to discuss and read about these issues further as undergraduate students asked usabout speci c incidences that they found either intriguing, puzzling, or, in some cases,shocking. Our intent was to use these issues to help students better understand literacylearners interest in learning as well as the life circumstances that both shaped thisinterest and rendered it challenging.

To be explicit, our intent was pragmatic and re ective, concerned primarily withintroducing college students to the range of programming in the adult literacycommunity and with helping them to understand what they met there as a basis forreconsidering literacy-related issues within the context of their society. For example,instructional methodologies presented in the class sessions included popular adulttutoring methods taught by two of the major volunteer tutoring associations in theUnited States as well as tutoring strategies espoused in major reading journals (e.g.,Davidson & Wheat, 1989 ; Flint-Ferguson & Youga, 1987 ; Keefe & Meyer, 1988 ;Lewkowicz, 1987 ; Wade & Reynolds, 1989). These strategies focused on such issues asthe role of evaluation in literacy learning, the teaching of decoding skills to older adults,

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the use of a computer in literacy instruction, and the development of metacognitiveawareness. In addition to concrete strategies for tutoring, other broad categories ofreadings included de nitions of literacy, types of adult literacy programs, characteristicsof adult learners, history of literacy } schooling, and ties to assessment, multiculturalism,and trends in legislation.

Within these topics, speci c issues of whole language, family literacy, participatoryeducation, and social networks around literacy learning were presented. While we didnot consider ourselves critical pedagogues per se, issues of critical literacy emerged inaccounts of adult learners social networks (Fingeret, 1983) and particularly inliterature addressing aspects of culture and literacy (Freire, 1970 ; Heath, 1983 ; Hunter,1982 ; Rodriguez, 1982). Critical literacy issues were also discussed within the largercontext of our survey of adult literacy education as we reviewed students insights andsaw explicit connections to the larger markers of cultural participation.

Colleg e student tutor s : Of the 51 students we worked with over four semesters, four wereAfrican-Americans, two Hispanics, and the rest white Americans, ve men and 46women. To gain insights into the understandings of these informants over threesemesters, we considered several sources of data : (a) participant observation eld notesof tutoring episodes and some classes, (b) students written statements of beginning-of-semester expectations, (c) students journal entries for each tutoring session, and (d)open-ended, end-of-semester interviews. A graduate assistant collected the eld notesfrom classes and tutoring sessions and shared them with us during the course of eachsemester.

We began analyzing data using the constant comparative method (Glaser &Strauss, 1967). That is, we read and reread data, comparing apparent perspectivesamong individual tutors and meeting several times to test coding categories on eachother. We sorted data into emerging categories using Ethnograph, a computer programthat produced printed copies of data sorted by code. Initial categories represented bothparticipant observation and self-report data quite literally, including descriptions ofsetting, tting into the setting, tutoring activities, learning about learners, learningabout tutoring, and re ecting on literacy and culture. As in other literacy studies thathave relied upon student journal analysis (Johnson, Lazar, & Bean, 1990 ; Lawson,Ryan, & Winterowd, 1989), data fell into both cognitive and a ective categories.

With time and analysis and with recognition of the subjectivities inherent instudents self-reports, we became most intrigued by the college students words abouttheir own tutoring experience. Their journals emerged as our primary source of insight.In an e ort to position the students insights in relation to larger contextual issues, ourconsideration of these data took on more of the character of interpretive interactionism(Denzin, 1989 ; Schwandt, 1994). That is, we began to consider explanations for ` ` howinteracting individuals connect their lived experiences to the cultural representations ofthose experiences (Schwandt, 1994, p. 74). Initial categories that described universitytutors perspectives on entry into the literacy education site, their activities, and theirlearning about adult learners and about tutoring (see Table 1) contributed to ourdevelopment of a larger thematic representation of tutor success and literacy as relatedto issues of critical literacy. Students brought up such ideological connections in relationto their more day-to-day concerns, showing evidence of the kind of border crossing theyengaged in as relatively privileged college students.

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Table 1. Initial categories

Breaking the ice :` ` The jitters Feeling unproductiveGetting asked for helpLearning about learners lives (` ` cold dose of reality )` ` Fitting in

Figuring out how to help :Tutors strategiesNot having the answersDiagnosingRemembering own experiences as learnersFiguring out role of teacher } tutor

Reactions to tutoring experience:Feeling rewarded

learner progresslearner con dence

feeling useful, con dentFeeling frustrated

learners lack of progressFeeling sad

leaving sitelearners may not continue

T utor stance :Toward educationToward literacy

Results

We recorded observations of the tutors in interactions with adult learners and in ourclass, teaching and talking about teaching, learning, literacy, and the larger society.Their voices in class and within the more private contexts of their journals re ected theirown realities as students in the university as well as in elementary and secondaryschools. Other observations included analyses of the nature of literacy and education,expectations of what they would experience in working as literacy tutors, and actualexperiences in working as tutors. We considered the convergence of these re ections asthe basis for a theory of teaching success, that is, how tutors made sense of the experienceof working with less literate adult learners.

We should note, before proceeding, that the observations of student-tutors may seempredictable to most readers. Most of our students were relatively young, and we thinktheir words re ect generalizations they have gleaned from our culture s stories aboutwhy people do things the way they do rather than from direct experience. We think thattheir words are a powerful reminder of the thinking that is apt to drive much serviceinteraction when one of the parties in the discourse is a novice who does not understandthe day-to-day life of the other party.

In general, tutors indicated that they felt most successful when tutoring wasapparently worth the e ort, that is, when they felt useful. More speci cally, tutors feltrewarded when their students made apparent progress in either literacy learning or inpersonal growth or when learners expressed gratitude for their assistance. Feelingsuccessful also meant that the boundaries between tutor and literacy student roles wereblurred, and there was a sense of equality and ` ` learning together. Conversely, tutorsexperienced a lack of success when students made little or no progress, when they did not

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ask for help when it was apparent to the tutors that help was needed, when they did nottake their work in the literacy classroom ` ` seriously, or when they failed to show up forclass. These gaps led tutors to feel that they were ` ` wasting their time.

Tutors feelings of success or the lack thereof evolved over the 3 months that theyspent as literacy tutors. Entering the site initially was most chaotic, as tutors struggledto calm their nervousness about engaging in a new experience and as they negotiatedrelationships with a group of adult students who generally represented a social class andsometimes an ethnic background that was unfamiliar to them. Once comfortable, thenext challenge was guring out how to actually help less literate adult students andtrying to understand the source of problems. Finally, tutors had to make a transition outof the literacy site and to situate their understandings within the larger context of theirunderstandings of how the world works.

Breaking the ice

Today was my rst tutoring session. I really had a case of the jitters, not knowingwhat to expect.

College students were given broad instructions during their class sessions at theuniversity ` ` nd ways to help learners with their work, whatever it is meant toprepare them for a variety of tutoring placements. The majority of student-tutors feltchallenged by the opportunity to forge their own way. Nonetheless, most entered the rst day with the ` ` jitters, h ighly anxious about how learners would accept them and,most important, their o ers of assistance. ` ` No one asked for help I can t do what I msupposed to do was heard frequently in the initial days of tutoring. Thus, a criticalmarker in college students comfort level came with literacy learners requests forassistance. Initiation of requests for and o ers of assistance gradually became moreregular as tutors came to see classroom teachers and literacy learners as ` ` not hostile and as tutors gathered con dence in their own skills. Some tutors reported not feelingwelcomed by literacy learners at rst, but, as one young woman put it, ` ` The ice beginto break when I worked with individuals. My help was requested by three di erentstudents; it was a powerful experience.

Tutors reported that literacy learners ` ` who used to refuse [help] asked forassistance in a variety of circumstances, e.g., ` ` even in the hall ; ` ` even though they reolder than me ; ` ` instead of the (classroom) teacher.

The resentment felt by some that literacy learners were merely ` ` letting themintrude d issipated, and as one tutor suggested, ` ` Fitting in isn t too hard the peoplewho attend classes here are committed to learning and are willing to accept help in anyform that it comes. For many tutors, this time period was also when initial relationshipsformed with those students whom they helped on a regular basis. Feelings of nervousnessgave way to feelings of excitement about the prospect of working with the challenges oflow literacy. For tutors who thought of themselves as ` ` very approachable and helpful, it was illuminating to them to realize that they would not necessarily like all the literacylearners they were there to help and that literacy learners could and did help each otherout. Tutors also learned that if literacy learners did not request their help, it was possiblethat they either needed to work things out on their own or to get help from other sources.

Fitting into the setting and into the rhythm of tutoring was but one of the challengestutors faced in their initial days in the classroom. Perhaps equally challenging for tutorswas trying to understand the life circumstances of adult students who were often of quite

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di erent social and economic backgrounds. University student tutors were usuallywhite middle-class Americans, while the adults enrolled in literacy classes, in additionto having less formal education than their tutors, were frequently also of di erenteconomic, ethnic, or racial backgrounds than tutors.

Tutors were intrigued by stories about literacy learners drug abuse, about domesticviolence, about the student ` ` who s my age and has two kids already , and about thewoman who had given up several children for adoption and was now hoping to havemore. For example, one said :

He said he did a lot of drugs when he was younger and that it fried his brain. Thereare times when he ll be working on a problem, and all of a sudden, he forgets whathe s doing. It s scary. This tutoring is a cold dose of reality.

It was not that the college students were totally naive about the lives of undereducatedpeople who tended to live in poverty. Rather, they had seldom gotten to know peoplewith serious personal, social, and economic problems on a personal level. They wereamazed at the story of a literacy student who had been red from her job as a bartenderbecause she ` ` couldn t spell and of learners who ` ` didn t know about FICA, aboutcredit union dues, and who had no idea how to do fractions because they had neverbeen presented with the concept. This intrigue and amazement was tinged withadmiration for literacy learners who came back to school despite seemingly crushingpersonal circumstances, and with gratitude for not having been born poor. Some tutorsdistanced themselves from these life circumstances, a few identi ed with them, andothers re ected upon their own good fortune to have been born and raised in morefavorable circumstances.

When confronted with literacy learners absences, tutors were able to makeconnections with what they had learned during their weekly university classes.Stereotypes about literacy learners were sometimes con rmed : ` ` I guess he s kind ofwhat I pictured when I had my original image of GED students. He was kicked out ofschool in the ninth grade for punching a teacher. In other cases, stereotypes werebroken : ` ` He was a very intelligent middle-aged man. [The teacher] agreed with methat he didn t seem like ` the average adult basic education student.

Another part of tting into the literacy education site was establishing the trustingrelationships that preceded actually helping with literacy : ` ` You have to gure out howto build con dence rst before going on with the technical stu . As tutors grew morecon dent in their interpersonal and tutoring skills, they reported seeing more con dencein adult students. One of the most rewarding aspects of the tutoring experience wasprecisely this increased con dence. They connected this to their university readings :` ` [The learner s increased con dence] veri ed all of the material that I read about onthe self-esteem factor involved in adult basic education. Gaining literacy learnerstrust was only the rst step, however : ` ` Ron told me I could read and he can t, so he lltrust me. The good part is I have his trust ; the bad part is he expects miracles.

Figuring out how to help

I know it makes sense to me, but will it make sense to them ?

Tutoring sometimes resembled a dance, as tutors grappled with decisions about whento lead hesitant literacy learners and when to follow as learners gained con dence.

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Tutors helped literacy learners to assess the limitations of approaching problems in oldand familiar ways. At the same time, they encouraged literacy learners to draw upontheir unique strengths in learning new material :

I told him that he knows how to do these math problems, but we just have to brushup on them. His knowledge is just buried deep down ; it is only a matter of timebefore we nd it.

Tutors got used to reading textbooks and adapting exercises to the needs of theirstudents and to ` ` imitating the [literacy classroom] teacher when they saw a behavioror philosophy that they felt was pedagogically useful. However, tutors varied in theirtrust of their own learning strategies as guidelines for how to work with students. Inteaching sign numbers, one tutor said it was ` ` d i cult to explain because the bookteaches one way, and I learned a di erent way. This tutor went on to explain his way.Another tutor suggested, however, that :

The way I would have gone about solving the problem was not the way I knewI should explain it to the student. The ` shortcuts were only to be used after thestudent mastered the proper way to solve the problem.

Tutors learned to gauge how far to push literacy learners as they tackled new material,stopping short of discouragement, yet urging a stretch beyond the zone of comfort : ` ` AsI sat and worked with him, I gradually stopped reading the problems aloud. Finally,when we got through one problem and I didn t start reading the next, he jumped in andread it aloud himself. Knowing when to intervene was not a clear-cut issue: ` ` Does shewant suggestions from me or not ? Or does she want to do things her own way ?

Developing ways to deal with literacy learners emotional issues around newlearning was as important as addressing more cognitive issues : ` ` Before moving toanother subject or section of the chapter or even leaving him to work independently, Iwould say something like ` how s this feel, or ` are you all right with this ? , very gentlybut not patronizing. When tutors observed literacy learners becoming dependent onthem, they interpreted this dependence negatively. Tutors wanted literacy learners tomove on to more independent learning strategies as soon as possible : ` ` I try to give hersecurity about her knowledge in math in a subtle way so it doesn t seem fake. I will sayto her in a joking way, ` See, you know what you re doing ; you don t need me .

Tutors had to get used to the idea that literacy learners were encountering for the rst time problems they had learned to solve long ago : ` ` It was something that came sonaturally to me that I could not think of how to break it down into steps for her. Sometutors were able to identify with the hurdles that learners faced and to communicatetheir personal stories to learners :

I told Alice what happened to me, and that she wasn t learning disabled. I was inEnglish honors when I was in the ` ` slow learners geometry class. I told hersometimes it takes people longer to learn some things than others.

As a way of coming up with teaching strategies, tutors found it useful to re ect upontheir own experiences as learners, as far back as childhood : ` ` I have to think back to howI learned long division. Tutors learned to ask the same question in a variety of ways,to give illustrations from their own experience, and to encourage learners to do the samein order to make relevant connections to the problem at hand. Tutors especially likedbeing able to help learners connect with the real world :

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What really excited him was my answer to his question, ` ` what will I ever be ableto use this stu for ? At rst I didn t know what to tell him, then I rememberedhis interest in the nancial world and investments. I was able to teachsomething which was really important to him.

Tutors learned early in their tenure that they would not necessarily have all the answersto learners questions, especially in the area of mathematics.While this was disconcertingat rst, tutors gradually got used to not having to be the experts, as did their students:` ` They really got a charge out of knowing that even the ` college girl d idn t always havethe right answer. Not being the expert also provided a gateway into setting a moreegalitarian tone in the student tutor literacy student relationship : ` ` I made sure heknew that I wasn t the greatest at this I wanted him to realize that he knew just asmuch about fractions as I did. Over a period of time, tutors gained con dence andexperience in choosing particular strategies for literacy learners :

She said she never understood fractions. I started to explain, but she lookedconfused. So I asked her if she liked cooking. I asked her, does she ever doublerecipes ? Then, you know how to do fractions !

T rying to understand

Tutors wanted to understand the reasons for what they perceived as literacy learnersliteracy problems. They would try out potential hypotheses that in many cases werelinked to the development of a strategy : ` ` She s just having trouble getting her thoughtsout. As long as she can decide what to write, she shouldn t have a problem. Tutorsfrequently put forth a straightforward attribution of cause and e ect : ` ` He made lots ofmistakes because he tried to rush through everything, or ` ` The teacher told me Joe slong-term memory was not good ; that s probably why he gets so frustrated. Insituations like these, tutors de ned their task as getting more information from thestudent and developing a way of helping them overcome barriers to learning.

In their e orts to make sense of literacy learners problems, tutors sometimes wentbeyond hypothesizing to arrive at what seemed to us premature conclusions about thereasons for di culties with either literacy or learning : ` ` She s got low self-esteem whichstems from her abusive boyfriend, or ` ` She isn t doing her homework because she getstoo involved with the others outside of class. These conclusionswere often accompaniedby diagnoses of a clinical, judgmental nature, re ecting the ` ` teacher as expert rolemany had perhaps learned through earlier schooling : ` ` His entire problem is that hewon t slow down and do all the steps, or ` ` His attention span is not where it should be.I don t think he s ` slow but he does not retain knowledge successfully.

A ` ` good student } ` ` bad student dichotomy also emerged from tutors accounts.Bad students ` ` didn t do all the steps, ` ` talked to their friends during class, ` ` didn tpay attention, ` ` read too fast, ` ` didn t read the directions, ` ` d idn t value knowledgefor its own sake, and were ` ` lazy. ` ` Good students, on the other hand, ` ` d id the workeasily, ` ` worked at home ve hours a night, ` ` were there to learn and understand, ` ` questioned why things were done, ` ` really tried hard, even if they didn t succeed, ` ` had it together, and ` ` were grateful for my help. One tutor contrasted the ESLlearner she most enjoyed with a more problematic GED learner :

Duk s such a pleasure to work with, he s so into learning. He s got an amazingmemory. Fred, on the other hand, lacks motivation to even go through this

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program. Now, how is a person like this going to nish this class and pass theGED ?

Tutors were faced with dilemmas in which they had to nd a way out of their frustrationin working with particular literacy learners. One tutor was annoyed that literacylearners were talkative to the extent that ` ` they didn t know when enough was enough,and it was time to return to their work. She went beyond a simple characterization ofstudents who weren t exhibiting ` ` good student behavior to re ect on her ownconfusion on how to respond :

I guess I could say something about quieting down, but they are not children, andI shouldn t treat them as such. They are there for themselves, not for me. I supposeit is up to them to set their own paces. I would like to, however, try to motivatethem.

Tutors despaired over learners who weren t taking their education as seriously as tutorsthought they should : ` ` My whole life I ve been taught that education is the mostimportant thing and to come here and see this gets to you. Other tutors took learnerslack of progress as a challenge :

His homework shows that this material has not sunk in and that my tutoring is note ective enough. I need to keep with this and realize this is my rst time with anadult learner. This thought keeps me going !

Rewards of tutor ing

I love seeing a face light up when things are understood.

Working with learners as equals and getting to the point where the boundaries betweenteacher and learner blurred was an exciting outcome for tutors. Learners who expressedgratitude were especially appreciated, as were those who made observable progress.

He had so looked forward to and valued the time that we would be workingtogether that he made up his own lesson plan. He said, ` ` Well, I really appreciateall that you re doing for me. I don t want to waste a minute.

Boundaries between teacher and student grew less distinct: ` ` He thanked me. I toldhim I enjoyed working with him, but he had done the work. Another tutor reportedasking his learner to explain his method of approaching a problem, after which he astutor would then explain his approach, a way of working that ` ` supported the conceptthat education can be a two-way process.

Pride, joy, and happiness were the emotions tutors felt when learners progressed, orwhen they were at least making the e ort. ` ` Whether individuals were taking the TABE[Test of Adult Basic Education] tests or simply trying to master speci c topics, everyonewas working. Tutors positive feelings were integrally linked with learners adherenceto the work ethic. These were the ` ` good students. Their progress was only partlyacademic ; tutors were equally excited about the gains learners made in personal growthand self-con dence. They reveled in the learners who could ` ` do the whole workbook without the tutor s help.

The converse of the elation tutors felt when learners progressed was the despair andfrustration experienced when learners were not learning at the rate expected, or worse,

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when learners did not even show up. Tutors spoke often of learners ` ` nally getting thegrasp of a new concept. As the level of frustration rose, observations re ecteddesperation : ` ` He s just not getting it I don t know what to do with him. At times likethis, tutors seemed to alternate between wanting to chastise recalcitrant learners andpushing themselves to understand why learners were experiencing di culty.

Then, at the end of the semester, students found leaving their tutoring sites awrenching experience. They were hopeful that their learners would continue along thepath that they as tutors had helped to set. As they wrote their nal journal entries, theyspoke of ` ` appreciating the diversity, the unique needs, abilities, and expectations ofpeople and ` ` loving watching and helping others learn.

T he big pictur e

What is going on in these schools that makes young people want to drop out ?These people are not being reached ; they re getting lost.

A number of tutors questioned a society in which so many young people never nishedschool in the traditional 12 or 13 years. They contrasted the typical school experiencethat focuses on ` ` accumulating knowledge in preparation for exams with the adultbasic education classroom, which compared favorably :

Students in this environment have longer periods of time to prepare and can learnon their own with help if it s needed. They take the test when they re ready, notat the teacher s discretion. I wonder if this isn t a better system for learning andretaining more knowledge.

At the same time, after seeing a teacher go through a particularly rough week withde ant adult literacy learners, a young tutor expressed disbelief that ` ` tutoring waswhat she did for a living. Tutors also re ected on what they themselves had gotten outof traditional high schools and wondered if GED students might be missing outsomehow.

It seems like he s missing a lot by getting a GED instead of a real high schooldiploma. I guess one can justify that by saying in his life, he doesn t really need toknow all that other information. But isn t that attitude cheating him ? MaybeMark would like to learn calculus and things like that.

Tutors questioned procedures in some of the classrooms and came up with suggestionsfor getting learners more involved in instructional decisions. In some instances, theyquestioned practices that the academic world has also found less than useful in literacyeducation : ` ` Please tell me, what is the point of diagramming sentences? Tutors alsotried to understand how ` ` grown people felt in being labeled as ` ` learning disabled or ` ` dyslexic, concluding that although such labels might serve a purpose, they couldalso be very degrading. One tutor went as far as to suggest that ` ` the whole concept oflabeling should be thrown out the window all together ! The tendency in literacyclassrooms to equate testing and assessment with actual learning was also disturbing toour college student tutors. One tutor concluded that ` ` education is more of a continuousprocess, not just a collection of test grades or credit hours. Tutors saw an additionalneed in the literacy curriculum for more need-speci c ` ` seminars about child careoptions, budgeting, and other services that they felt would ` ` open doors for adultliteracy learners.

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Tutors learned more about the economics of adult basic education and worriedabout the literacy learners who might have to switch to another class location if the localadult basic education site closed. They also expressed concern about younger studentswhose youthful exuberance made it di cult for older students to concentrate. But mostof all, literacy tutors feared for those adults who had little education or whose negativeexperiences with school in the past were too vivid to make sticking with literacyeducation a desirable option. For instance, one tutor remarked, ` ` Street smarts will onlyget you so far. Combined with this concern for literacy learners was an echoing of acommon theme of some national literacy movements that ` ` Illiteracy can lead to thedownfall of American supremacy in the work place ; if we don t ght this problem ofilliteracy, we will lose business to our foreign counterparts.

Some tutors came into the tutoring environment with an interest in social,egalitarian issues : I was hoping to talk to Harry about social justice. Not in thoseterms, of course, but in terms that make sense to him. I wanted to ask him aboutdi culties he has had in the past because of his lack of reading ability.

Along similar lines, tutors concern for the poverty and abusive backgrounds of many oftheir individual students seemed to broaden their view of larger societal ills : ` ` It makesme realize how screwed up our society is. The welfare system actually encourages peopleto stay on welfare ! The issue of poverty also compelled students to re ect on howuniversity students could best present themselves to the class : ` ` When tutors enter thesites, they shouldn t aunt their wealth. Don t say you lost $300 last weekend gamblingwhen people can t pay their phone bills and rent.

While a number of tutors questioned how literacy learners had emerged from theAmerican educational system with minimal literacy skills, only a few student-tutorsexpressed curiosity about how learners interacted with the larger political environment :

I tried to talk to some people about why they are or are not registered to vote.Nobody had any substantial reasons. Perhaps the argument that the legitimacy ofthe government is in doubt when the majority of the people don t vote islegitimate. Since there are no candidates who will substantially help or hurt themajority of the people, who cares ? Only the issues like David Duke or abortiongalvanize the potential electorate. Then their interest is only transitory.

Generally, it seemed easier for students to accept students from outside the U.S., whenit could be presumed that customs and world-views would be di erent from those ofmainstream America. More challenging to understand or accept were the values andpractices of learners from racial, ethnic, or economic subcultures of the United Statesthat diverged from those of our predominantly white college students: ` ` It s all aboutthe American dream and how an immigrant comes to seek opportunity and gets it. W ith American subcultures, students were generally respectful if distant from those whobelonged to cultures with which they were unfamiliar : ` ` I m learning about Micheleand her personal life. Not that her personal life is so important ; I m merely trying toconnect information about her and her reasons for pursuing her education. Culturaldi erences, including those related to class, were noted with mild curiosity ` ` Walterhails from the West Indies. I forgot to ask him whether he spoke French or not. I noticedthat most people who come from W.I. speak uent French or a studied objectivity :

Ralph had been a [drug] user for 23 years. Erin [another tutor] was makingcomments to him like, ` ` Oh, how could you ? That was so bad. But it s a fact, he svery straightforward about it. No soapbox for or against.

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Gender issues for our mostly female tutors seemed present but tacit, lying beneath mostof their words but never made explicit in a way that we could pinpoint. Yet the fact thatmost of our tutors were female re ects the strong pulse of gender that beat through ourtutors words : women are the caregivers, nurturers, and teachers (Noddings, 1984).Issues around domestic abuse and pregnancy elicited the strongest reaction fromstudents, frequently one of shock :

She told me her leg hurt. I asked, why, and she said her boyfriend beat her upbecause he didn t want a baby. I didn t know what to say, in fact I don t evenremember what I said now.

Another tutor at the same school described the follow-up to this incident, and o eredassistance: ` ` she s not pregnant any more. Her mother kicked her out. She hinted atliving with me, but I avoided the issue. I wasn t sure what to say or do. I m going to lookinto alternative housing for her.

Discussion

As teachers and researchers, we embarked on this project wanting to expose students toa myriad of adult literacy issues and to encourage them to re ect on the importance ofsuch issues to their daily lives. We were motivated by a strong desire to learn fromstudents what issues they felt were most critical and how they perceived the manypersonal and social aspects of literacy education. To summarize what we learned,college student tutors in this study struggled to t in, to negotiate a helping relationshipwhen neither they nor their literacy learners knew exactly what to expect, and to teach.They learned that the schools were not doing a good job in preparing all children forsome measure of success and that curricula that were ine ective on the primary andsecondary school levels were all too frequently imported to adult classrooms. Theylearned rsthand about the e ects of social injustice and hypothesized about some of itscauses. Finally, they learned that societal changes were not initiated by one persontrying to convince another person to make a lifestyle change.

Success for the university student tutors in this project was clearly dependent uponbeing useful to literacy learners and upon learners, in turn, being successful students ofreading, writing, and math. In their view, helping literacy learners to understand andto advance to the next rung of the education ladder is the work of a good teacher in theAmerican school system. Ultimately, their views re ected those found in theircommunity placements rather than any alternative view that we promoted through ourpurposefully wide-ranging, sometimes critical university course. Their understandingsrepresented the seemingly practical view that education is to be valued for its own sake.Left unquestioned was whether the existing system was a vehicle for liberation or forreproduction of the status quo.

Giroux (1992) speaks of an initial disjuncture between the hope o ered byuniversities and the work that must be done to produce and transform knowledge in aworld fraught with asymmetrical power relationships. This asymmetry between theproducers and receivers of knowledge was re ected by the ` ` cold dose of reality student-tutors experienced when they learned about the hard lives of their learners. Webelieve that our college student literacy tutors responded to this asymmetry by workingwith their teachers, however unwittingly, to reinforce the dominant culture s edu-cational paradigms (Grumet, 1988). The individually oriented work-ethic strategies

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that tutors excavated from their own school backgrounds during seat-of-the-pantsdecision making were those strategies that they perceived had allowed them access tohigher education and, ultimately, greater power and authority without realizing thatmost of them had inherited their position in the hierarchy from their middle- and upper-class parents, and that the strategies that had seemed to work for them would perhapsnot work for others who did not share their inheritance. At the same time, collegestudent tutors were not uncritical of the system. Their questions did sometimes mirrorthose of the critical pedagogue, exploring consistencies and contradictions in experiencewith education (Brennan, 1987 ; Giroux, 1992 ; Kirk, 1986 ; Liston & Zeichner, 1987).But while they complained about a society and class structure that allowed them to besuccessful to others exclusion, they did not query their own participation, or ourparticipation, in its replication.

One signi cant feature of tutors experience was learning about new cultures. Theseincluded American subcultures di erentiated by race, ethnicity, and class as representedby students in basic education and GED classes ; foreign cultures as represented bystudents coming to English as Second Language classes ; and gender issues as manifestedby men and women of di erent ethnic backgrounds and social classes. These culturesand identities represent the real material, in terms of life circumstances, powerdynamics, and institutions, that together form the borderlands, ` ` sites of crossing,negotiation, translation, and dialogue (Giroux, 1994, p. 340). hooks (1994) talksabout how college students can go about acquiring knowledge concerning experiencesthey have not lived. Surely working in a literacy education classroom is one meanstoward an introduction to the lives of people from other cultures, based on race, class,gender, or ethnicity?

While we work to resolve those issues that are most pressing in daily life (our needfor literacy, an end to violence against women and children, women s health andreproductive rights, sexual freedom, to name a few), we engage in a criticalprocess of theorizing that enables and empowers. (hooks, 1994, p. 70)

In our examination of student-tutors words, it was clear that a large part of theirdevelopment was focused on identity and relative position : discovering how theylearned best, negotiating an educational role with adult learners, identifying theirrespective places in the world of educational ` ` haves and ` ` have-nots. The journalsalso tell us of tutors awakening to inequities throughout the educational system, as theya ect both children and adults, and society as a whole. A more radical education,however, would extend beyond the awareness level to dialogue among all a ectedparties, then to action, and back again to dialogue, in a cycle of re ection and action.Our college students, thus, helped us to understand that the border between campus lifeand the adult literacy community is a site of reproduction rather than transformation,at least as it was constructed in connection with this particular course. While our goalto heighten their awareness of personal and cultural issues inherent in literacy struggleswas a lofty one, our students potential to imagine a more participatory world was likelycompromised by a position at the border that rei ed, at least in part, their ongoingaction as agents of the social structures that now exist.

The struggle of these college students hints at our own struggles as a society tode ne a more productive literacy ; to achieve a greater, more accepting literacy for moreof our citizens ; to invite members of society to participate in the construction of a moreequitable society. College tutors have a unique voice : they are themselves students in auniversity, yet they become teachers once they step into the literacy tutor role. They

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have some freedom to shape this role, yet they are part of an established institutionwithin a larger societal discourse around literacy and education. Like those who theyworked with in adult basic education settings, the voices re ected in this study providelittle evidence that our course helped these particular students to see themselves asfuture agents of social transformation. However, there are hints that they are movingfrom an unwitting reproduction of the schooling hegemony to a more hopeful vision ofthe dignity, knowledge, and empowerment of the adult learner. To do more, we mustreturn to our own pedagogy, nding ways to move its concerns from awareness and tto something that requires a more transformative position. We should nd a way to tsocial action into our work with existing literacy programs, or we should nd alternativeprograms that will provide a better model of what could be. Also, we should probablyexamine the possibility that societal trajectories cannot be altered with literacyeducation. Only in uncomfortable conversations that explore such connections betweenthe personal and the liberatory will we be able to understand these issues in a way thatultimately fosters the more democratic society that we espouse.

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