Re-visioning literacy persistence: Participants and practitioners in the shadow of welfare reform.

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Jackson, Jacqueline Kitson.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Reading.

Adult education.

Women's studies.

0453.

0516.

0535.

Local Subjects:

0453.

0516.

0535.

Physical Description:

235 pages

Contained In:

Dissertation Abstracts International 70-04A.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

text file

Summary:

This dissertation examines participant and practitioner interactions in community-based adult literacy education programs in the wake of federal welfare reform legislation (also known as The Personal Work and Responsibility Act or PWORA). Oral and written narrative accounts of twenty-nine adult literacy education participants culled from interviews, literacy classroom exercises, and community forums reveal how economically impoverished urban women negotiate literacy persistence before, during and after the implementation of PWORA mandates. Four critical themes emerge from the narratives; participants' self-articulated significance of literacy and literacy persistence, the role of collaborative and collective gendered relationships within adult literacy classrooms populated by women, the anchoring effect of community based adult literacy education agencies on literacy persistence and the importance of practitioner-based research in illuminating these field-based perspectives.

The implications emerging from this dissertation are layered and embedded in reciprocal relationships between practitioners and participants. First, women have their own motives for persisting with literacy which are not always the same as those of policy mandates. Collective relationships, especially social practices of support among women in adult literacy classes may facilitate literacy persistence. Reflective practices, chiefly the tenet of reciprocity, have the potential to deepen the transmission of skills in adult literacy classes by tailoring programs of service to facilitate participants' goals. Throughout the dissertation practitioner inquiry is positioned as a tool for recovering field-based perspectives implicated in the continuity and vitality of the field of adult literacy education. Finally, the dissertation considers the implications of the erosion of community based adult literacy sites whose small size and adaptability have historically been supportive of women's literacy persistence and facilitated their transition to meaningful work beyond subsistence.

Notes:

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-04, Section: A, page: 1136.

Adviser: Vivian Gadsden.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 2009.

Local Notes:

School code: 0175.

ISBN:

9781109120660

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.