It is time to review the schedule for the placement of your session in the AAACE Agenda. This is the final draft of the Schedule. When you look up your name, use the detail listing to check what days/times you asked to be placed. This is a huge program and we can accommodate necessary changes in day and time now, but may not be able to do so after September 1, 2013 except in emergencies. Please carefully check your placement and send any requests to Ginger Phillips, AAACE Conference Planner with AAACE Session Change Request in the subject line. We will respond to your email, but it may take us up to a week to do so. Thanks for your help in "fine tuning" this agenda!
Weaving an Identity: How a Novice Adult Educator Draws Prior Professional Identities into the Classroom
Type of Presentation
Shared
Session Abstract
How does a novice adult educator move fluidly among distinct professional identities? We explore how a social worker constructs a safe learning space while bringing real-world provocations to the classroom.
Target Audience
Our discussion is relevant for adult education scholars interested in ways educators’ construction of identity shifts contextually (Farnsworth, 2010; Juzwik & Ives, 2010). Our participant in this single-case study, Melissa, identifies herself as a therapist and cultural worker, but states she is not a “degreed teacher” like others. Moving between established professional identities and a novice teaching identity, she finds herself “mimick[ing] the traditional teachers.” Like other second-career teachers, Melissa is an expert novice (Williams, 2010), pulled between an expert identity and a new teaching identity. This discussion is equally relevant for adult literacy educators who negotiate distinct professional identities.
Learning Outcomes
In terms of theoretical learning outcomes, the session will explore the identity challenges that face novice adult educators coming from other professional experiences and how these challenges affect educators’ perspectives on adult learners and the classroom context. In terms of practical learning outcomes, session participants will consider and dialogue about their own professional identit(ies), how they shift in different contexts, and how to purposefully and mindfully construct their own classroom identities.
Session Description
This session reports on a single-case study of an instructor who has been teaching GED classes for 18 months. Interviews were analyzed for the participant’s use of discourse to construct her teaching identity (Gee, 2001;). Melissa weaves strands of her established professional identities into her developing identity as an adult educator. For instance, she applies the technique of “holding the space” from social work, beginning the semester by making a “safe” space for students. In her work with drug addicts, Melissa has come to value individuals’ untapped resources, a value she brings into the adult classroom, “digging out what is already buried there.” She is gentle and challenging with her students, resembling the warm demander described by other researchers (Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 2009). Melissa also draws in her identity as a cultural worker, bringing what she calls a “world perspective” or “feminist perspective” into the classroom.
Efforts are made to try to schedule sessions on the day preferred by the Primary Presenter, though this cannot be guaranteed. Please check your preference.
Thursday November 7