| The following proposal outlines a conceptual | | | | These nodes are also conceived as simple, broad |
| framework for an expressive writing project that | | | | questions that can be construed into more specific, |
| accommodates and builds on students' lives and | | | | focused inquiries by students and instructors. For |
| experiences. This framework forms a trajectory (see | | | | students like Lana, this trajectory might become a |
| Figure 1) of potential writings, at once challenging, | | | | model for liberatory literacy education, whereby |
| encouraging, and timely, as well as respectful and | | | | students' writing is geared toward recognition of |
| attentive to the complex lives of adults and is | | | | social, cultural, and economic reasons for past, |
| intended as a model for instructors to help students | | | | current, and future problems they may be struggling |
| visualize/conceptualize their involvement with | | | | to understand. Quigley's (1997) review of liberatory |
| education and position learners' lives, experiences, and | | | | literacy education highlighted a number of successful |
| interests at the center of all activities and learning | | | | programs nationwide, such as the famous Highlander |
| that occur in the classroom. | | | | Research and Education Center in Tennessee, |
| Orientation is an organizing principle for the | | | | functioning, for obvious political reasons, outside the |
| development of life-relevant material for literacy | | | | Omega Seamaster Replica realm of federal funding, |
| instruction. This organizing principle might also assist | | | | and notes how the radical label has kept them, and |
| students and instructors should they choose to adopt | | | | this view of literacy education as a whole, on the |
| or adapt any outside materials—other pilot or | | | | sidelines of policy discussions and implementation. |
| experimental programs and projects—for use in | | | | Ultimately, though, policymakers play only a partial |
| their classrooms. The points Omega Replica along the | | | | role in adult education's future (Fingeret, 1984) while |
| conceptual trajectory are conceived of as "nodes," | | | | practitioners, a label which should also include adult |
| much the way a cultural geographer might consider a | | | | learners themselves, play the leads. Change— |
| particular locale within a city to be a historical, cultural, | | | | philosophical, curricular, or pedagogical—begins with |
| or civic node: a place where different peoples, | | | | the people who make the field, and while educators |
| activities, and functions intersect. These nodes | | | | in state-run programs can't just simply stop teaching |
| represent points along a chronological timeline as well | | | | prescribed curricula, they can and should be |
| as points along a perceptual interpretive timeline, both | | | | encouraged and supported in augmenting those |
| of which articulate with the conceptual framework of | | | | curricula with ideas for projects, assignments, and |
| orientation, where students begin by exploring past | | | | lessons that return some control of learning back to |
| experiences, working their way through the present | | | | learners and create conditions where learners might |
| and culminating in writing(s) aimed at articulating | | | | begin to empower themselves by writing their own |
| possible futures. | | | | stories. |