2019 Annual Conference

Adult Basic Education and Literacy Education

Shared Concurrent Session (Approx. 12 or 20 minutes)

Providing access to education has remained a pillar of educational activism for adult literacy educators, even with increasing pressure from state policies to measure and document learner outcomes for the neoliberal economy. This presentation will explore the limits and possibilities of “access” initiatives as policy shifts towards more access-oriented projects.

The target audiences include researchers involved in critical, anti-racist, and feminist traditions of adult education, or in the areas of literacy learning for popular education or social justice. Another target audience includes adult (literacy) practitioners working within adult basic education sites and at the frontlines of international shifts in adult literacy policy.

By attending this session, individuals will have some concrete tools to articulate the implications of policy on adult learners’ experiences and the barriers towards shift learning relationships towards more transformative, justice-oriented terms. Participants will also begin to observe how policy takes up the goals and language of “access”-oriented education in contradicting and limiting ways.

I will begin by reviewing some of the common claims made in adult education scholarship and practice about the human rights inherent in adult learning. I will contrast these statements with arguments from more critical, anti-racist and postcolonial education scholars who relay concerns about adult education in the neoliberal era. Following this, I will introduce the context of adult basic education, where the tensions between ideals and policy emerge under increasing demands to build literate, trained, and working populations that meet standardized measures established by the International Adult Literacy Survey and its legacy of assessments. Using Ontario, Canada, as my local context, I will illustrate the way adult literacy policy and practice create conditions that are counter-productive to access, and instead draw from anti-racist feminists that examine what it means to learn for social transformation (Allman, 2010).

Through this presentation, I seek to contribute to critical adult education by countering research that fixates on the value of quantitative data and works under direction of state-funded objectives in literacy and basic education, and by developing analyses around increasing pressures that devalue and disorient literacy educators from social justice.

Depending on the space and technology available, I will deliver an oral presentation with supporting text in the form of either a powerpoint or handout for review. If appropriate, I can develop some concluding questions that can support discussion-based responses to my paper or shared session.

Also, I may also integrate artifacts into my presentation to guide discussion around my paper and relevance of the themes.