For Immediate ReleaseNovember 15, 2000
Contact:Alisa Giardinelli(610) 690-5717[email protected]
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Home/News
Swarthmore Students and Staff Members Team Together in Unique Program That Provides an Alternative to 'Student-Teacher' Relationship
An adult workplace learning program at Swarthmore College provides more than a unique forum in which students and staff members can learn from each other. The program also suggests a new model on which similar programs can be based.
Rather than focusing merely on skill acquisition, as do many workplace literacy programs, Learning for Life at Swarthmore joins student volunteers and college staff members together in "learning partnerships" in which the roles of "teacher" and "learner" are shared. The result, as new research suggests, is a learner-centered program that both strengthens literacy education and builds community.
"Learning for Life (L4L) is predicated on the belief that adults are best able to identify what they desire to learn," says Diane Anderson, an assistant professor of education and a founder of the program. "I just love challenging general assumptions about who's literate or not. There are strong categories about these things in our society, and I like blowing them up."
The program is designed so the teams may explore the interests of the adult staff members, most of whom work in dining and environmental services. Recent collaborations include: a staff member who learned a tax-filing program and used it to start her side business, another who learned how to scan photos and now provides digital images for a colleague's website, and a staff member who taught his student partner how to design web pages. Other skills such as photography, math proficiency, and word-processing are also exchanged.
According to Anderson, pilot research on the program suggests its premise might have implications for other workplace learning programs. She will present her qualitative study at the National Reading Conference at the end of this month in Scotsdale, Ariz.
"Our research suggests that shifting the power dynamics within the learning relationship, coupled with increased access to the educational resources on campus, strengthens literacy education and builds community," Anderson says. "Students appreciate the knowledge and intelligence that the learners bring to the partnerships, and they learn from the staff about the college and about life in general. In the process, age, race, class, and gender boundaries are crossed."
An expert on literacy who is interested in the intersection of literacy and social identities, Anderson was recently named a 2000 Promising Researcher by the National Council of Teachers of English. In the fall of 1999, she implemented L4L as the service-learning component for one of her classes; it is now a separate program with almost 100 students and staff participants. Last month, in a collaboration rarely seen at academic conferences, several students and staff members joined Anderson at the national conference of the Student Coalition for Literacy Education in Chapel Hill, N.C. to present some of the study's preliminary results.
Located near Philadelphia, Swarthmore is a highly selective liberal arts college with an enrollment of 1,450. Swarthmore is ranked among the top liberal arts colleges in the country by U.S. News & World Report.
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