Designing Adult Literacy GED Academic Writing Pedagogy: Using Bakhtin to Learn From Tension

• In Event: 28.092 - Sheraton Roundtable Two - Osgoode Ballroom
  In Roundtable Session: 28.092-11 - Adult Literacy and ESL Education

Abstract

While adult literacy programs have historically been marginalized within the US educational system, there is growing interest in making these programs more academically effective. Because of this, the General Education Development (GED) exam was recently revised to be more rigorous, especially in its assessment of writing. Although these changes provide the adult literacy field with new opportunities, they also now require the field to engage with the inherent complexity of teaching academic writing. This study attempts to help the field engage with this complexity by using a Bakhtinian lens – a lens that centralizes the complexity of language and celebrates conflicting perspectives – to study a multi-theoretical academic writing pedagogy within an adult literacy GED course.

Author

• Sasha V. Lotas, Academy of Hope Adult Public Charter School