Changing Face of ABE: a photostory project - an ACIFA Presentation

Online distance technology is often heralded as removing barriers and providing access to education for all.   Distance education heralded as anytime, anywhere implies an equal opportunity to learn, which often does not take into account the holistic vision of learners and all that contributes to their academic success.  

The photostory research I am in the process of wrapping up came out of the tension between accessibility and students' reality.  Specifically students who arrive from the margins.  Specifically students whose skills are at pre-high school, with lower literacy and numeracy levels than the average distance student. 

What bothered me about the “anytime, anywhere” rhetoric, is that is is often spoken about without reference to instructors or pedagogy.  It caused me to think : what does it mean to the programming and students who arrive as emergent learners.  Especially those underrepresented learners, the ones with low computer literacy and even lower self-efficacy. Was online learning really the panacea for these learners, would it really “make everything better?”

If you're in Lake Louise for the ACIFA Conference, come talk about the changing face of adult basic educationg.  I'll be presenting on May 25 at 11:15 a.m. about this research, and how traditionally face to face instruction is translating to the online environment.  

Violence and learning - SWEET (Students who have experience extreme trauma)

Last week I had the pleasure of listening to a presentation by Mavis Averill. She has done research on students who have experienced extreme trauma, or "SWEET," based on her experiences working for Boyle Street Education Center.  Mavis says, "Our work is to engage them long enough at school so that we may uncover their strengths and support them in looking at a new way of being; one which leads them away from crime, chaos and loss, to one which includes acknowledgement and the possibility of successful attainment of needed skills to go forward into a life that has more options than the one they came from" (Retrieved from LINK). 

This encapsulates so many themes.  Transformation.  Wellness. Basic education learners, or those who are under-represented by literature and programming. It speaks to modifying and adapting our approaches and programming to recognize the learner as a unique individual who  is more than a receptacle for information. 

One of the overriding barriers within educational environments is the idea that failing is the fault of the learner.  This kind of approach can feed the idea that survivors of abuse have caused their own victimization, as well as issues of power and culpability within teaching practices (Horsman, 2008). Awareness and information that brings to light the very real barriers caused by the experience of violence and trauma upon a students' learning is an often under-represented and not well understood.  

It would serve all educators well to become familiar with research like Mavis's SWEET and the information that can be found on Learning and Violence.net that comes from Jenny Horsman's research.