Diverse Voices All Singing in the Same
Key: Portraits of Adult Learners in a
Multi-Cultural Composition Classroom
Sonia Feder-Lewis
Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, School of
Graduate and Professional Programs
Diverse Voices
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Different Nationalities
Different Ages
Different Academic Backgrounds
Different Reasons for Being in School
Some Background about Saint Mary’s
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Total of about 5,500 Students
Approximately 1,300 traditional students
4,200 Returning Adult Students in Graduate
and Professional Programs
Approximately 800 undergraduates in
Bachelor Completion Programs
Over 3000 students in Masters and Doctoral
Programs
More Background
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Students in nearly every program, at every
level take a targeted Composition Course,
such as Professional Writing, Communication
Skills, or Advanced Research Writing.
Students at the Twin Cities Campus represent
a wide variety of nationalities and ethnic
groups, again at every level.
Saint Mary’s Lasallian Mission
“In the Lasallian spirit of faith and zeal, Saint Mary’s
University — a global and diverse learning
community — serves students through relevant and
innovative educational programs, experiences, and
enterprises. The university is nourished by its
Catholic intellectual, moral, and cultural traditions
and is inspired by excellence in teaching as modeled
by Saint John Baptist de La Salle, founder of the
Brothers of the Christian Schools. The hallmark of
the university is its commitment to serve the needs
of individual learners and promote life-long learning
in a variety of contexts.” (Saint Mary’s Website).
Focus of Research and Presentation
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Students arrive from numerous Masters programs,
including education, business, psychology,
economics, and law
Varied academic writing skills, from fully able to
enter the academic discourse, to just entering the
conversation
Fully realized professionals in many cases, working
as Managers, Principals, Administrators, often
working in fields of social justice
Focus of Research and Presentation
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Doctoral Advanced Research Writing Course
Required as first course for all incoming Doctoral
students in the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership
Masters Introduction to Research Course required as
first class in any Masters Program
Extremely diverse students—a recent class had
students from multiple countries in Africa, Taiwan,
and the Middle East, along with African Americans,
Chinese American, and White students as well, in a
class of 20.
Ages range from late 20s to mid 60s
Student as Subject
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Knowing, whatever its level, is not the act by which
a Subject transformed into an object docilely and
passively accepts the contents others give or impose
on him or her. Knowledge, on the contrary,
necessitates the curious presence of Subjects
confronted with the world. It requires their
transforming action on reality. It demands a constant
searching. It implies invention and re-invention. It
claims from each person a critical reflection on the
very act of knowing.
Paulo Freire (p. 101)
Adult Learners—Related Facts
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Require direct involvement in their learning
Prefer validation of their personal experience
and prior learning
Are focused, directed, committed
Have outside life demands that they are
balancing while attending school
Writing Anxiety in the Adult
Composition Student
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Professionals in their own rights
Facing challenges daily
Unnerved by the unfamiliar
Exaggerated fear of failure
Despite prior academic success, self-identify
as outsiders
Academic Discourse
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“I love what’s in academic discourse: learning, intelligence,
sophistication—even mere facts and naked summaries of
articles and books; I love reasoning, inference, and evidence;
I love theory. But I hate academic discourse. . . . Discourse
carries power. This is especially important for weak or
poorly prepared students—particularly students from poorer
classes or those who are the first in their families to come to
college. Not to help them in their academic discourse is
simply to leave a power vacuum and thereby reward
privileged students who have already learned academic
discourse at home or in school—or at least the roots and
propensity for academic discourse.” Peter Elbow
Strangers in a Strange Land
“My students needed to be immersed in talking,
reading, and writing, they needed to further develop
their ability to think critically, they needed to gain
confidence in themselves as systematic thinkers.
They needed to be let into the academic club. . . . A
traveler in a foreign land best learns names of people
and places, how to express ideas, ways to carry on a
conversation by moving around in the culture,
participating as fully as he can, making mistakes.”
Mike Rose
Officer Joe
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“Well, I’m not drinking—yet.”
Comment regarding how a literature review was
coming along.
Brother William
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“How can you ever have read enough?”
“But it isn’t perfect.”
“I feel so overwhelmed.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
Comments made during a period of writer’s
block and crisis of confidence.
Authority as an Idea
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“If teaching requires the teacher’s authority,
and if the teacher’s authority, no matter in
what form it appears, has the potential danger
of oppression and exclusion, if the teacher has
the obligation to impose the cultural arbitrary
and the responsibility to oppose the hegemony
of the dominant class, culture, and ideology in
education, what can the teacher do to fulfill
both tasks in teaching?” Xin Liu Gale, p.55
Discord—Or A New Melody
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What happens when a student challenges you,
the teacher, and he or she may be right?
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Principal Bobby
Harmony: Authority in the New
Classroom
“Within the school structure—a structure that radical
theorists often describe negatively as an institution
designed to control the poor and eliminate cultural
diversity—there is space for a teacher and student to
nurture collaborative, critical thinking while
working toward a more equitable distribution of our
society’s cultural, intellectual, and material goods.”
Stephen Fishman and Lucille McCarthy
References
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