Graduate Students as Adult Learners

Hi Kimme,

Here is one category that we might want to use to classify sources. What do you think about this? --Barbara

Adult Learners in Graduate School

We have at least two sources already.
13. Pandey, Iswari P. "Literate Lives across the Digital Divide." Computers and Composition 23 (2006): 246-57. Print.

Pandey draws attention to social and political dimensions of literacy learning. He complicates the concept of the “digital divide” to include not just relative poverty and wealth but also how literacy itself, including digital literacies, is deployed by the government to reproduce or undermine political ideologies. To achieve this goal, Pandey writes a literacy narrative. He begins the narrative in 2005, with the writing of this essay. At that time, he was living in the United States and pursuing graduate studies. His home country of Nepal, however, was experiencing both political and social turmoil. Pandey then describes his literacy education from his early years in “order to give [his] readers a fuller view of the ways the external conditions (digital) literacy learning” (247). Pandey was born in a rural area of Nepal in 1968, eight years after the King of Nepal successfully toppled a democratically elected government. The King was specifically concerned that increased levels of literacy would lead to popular discontent, and strictly controlled education and access to mass media. During this period, the author learned to read and write under his father’s guidance. At 5, he entered a Sanskrit school; at 10, he entered a public school at which he studied, among other things, English. Learning English laid the groundwork for the digital literacy that would one day facilitate his ability to cross the digital divide. During this period of his education, two curricula emerged: the state-sponsored curriculum and an alternative curriculum based on protest literature. As he finished his MA in 1993, the writer became aware of the value of digital literacy as he sought to complete his thesis. His access to computers is an important part of his literacy narrative because it demonstrates that “state ideology . . . shapes not only the course of learning as carried out in schools and colleges but also the technology of literacy” (250). It was only the change in politics that was not dominated by nobility that made technology available. Describing the history of technology in Nepal and his own personal history as a learner of technology, Pandey reports overcoming many obstacles to becoming literate and warns against interpreting his story as a "hero narrative." The politics of use and place both “undercut the prevailing myths about computer and the Internet as neutral and world-wide medium” (253). Literacy practices across the digital divide, then, do not take the form of a linear narrative but involve an “ongoing negotiation” (254).



9. Inman, James, and Dagman Stuehrk Corrigan. "Toward a Doctoral Degree
by Distance in Computers and Writing: Promises and Possibilities."
Computers and Composition 18 (2001): 411-22. Print.

The authors begin by noting that as access to the Web became more commonplace, distance education programs proliferated. These programs are particularly attractive to non-traditional students, who often have responsibilities that prevent them from pursuing degrees at residential campuses. The authors argue that because of these dynamics, the time has come to offer a fully online PhD program. The field of computers and writing has many experienced teachers of composition without doctoral training who are place-bound. These returning “adult learners with significant experience in the field seem to be the ideal prospective students for a doctoral program by distance” (413).
Inman and Corrigan then turn to the results of their survey of 150 degree granting institutions. Half of these are four-year institutions, and the other half have graduate programs. The questionnaire “sought to obtain two specific bits of information . . . : if they had hired or plan to hire computers-and-writing specialists and, if so, how they would assess the various applicant pools in terms of strengths and weakness” (415). Among the responses received from the four-year institutions, 7 implied that “they do not believe computers and writing is a reasonable specialty” (415). The authors interpret these responses, and others that reflected the same sentiment, to mean that the field of computers and writing “does not fit well into all contemporary institutional and departmental cultures" (416). In terms of the assessment of applicants, many of the respondents did not feel that the applicants were strong candidates for a number of reasons, e.g., the candidates’ lack of balance between technical and pedagogical issues, the failure to look at the new forms of writing that the technology created, and the weak records of publication. Of the graduate-degree-granting institutions, “11 of the 58 responding administrators did not imagine computers and writing as part of their mission at all” (416). Administrators at these institutions expressed similar doubts about these applicants’ ability to succeed at the tenure-line level. The writers interpret this data to mean “that room does exist in computers and writing education for an innovative program, one that continually adapts to the changing opportunities and implications of technology and one that well represents field diversity” (418). In their conclusion, that authors propose a PhD program that would exist fully online. The program would be administered by a consortium of institutions, and no course work would be required. Instead, students would complete four research projects overseen by any member of the consortium of the student’s choice. The program of study would culminate with a dissertation.