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This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled

Adults Learning to Reflect:
Assessment of Prior Private Learning

presented by

Falinda Sue Hartsuff Geerling

has been accepted towards fulfillment

of the requirements for the
Department PhD. Higher, Adult, Life Long
of Education
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ADULTS LEARNING TO REFLECT:
A STUDY OF ASSESSMENT OF PRIOR PRIVATE LEARNING

By

F alinda Sue Hartsuff Geerling

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Educational Administration

2003

ABSTRACT

ADULTS LEARNING TO REFLECT:
A STUDY OF THE ASSESSMENT OF PRIOR PRIVATE LEARNING

By

Falinda Sue Hartsufi‘ Geerling

Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) is a process used by many postsecondary
institutions to award academic credit to adult learners for knowledge derived from life
experiences. For the most part, PLA has focused on occupational or work-related
experiences. A few institutions have extended this assessment process to significant
life experiences not related to work such as divorce, job loss, or drug and alcohol
recovery. However, we know relatively little about adult learners’ experiences in
these programs. The life events that are ofien the focus of this process represent
powerful, afl‘ective or emotional experiences in the learners’ lives. For this reason, we
sought to develop a deeper understanding of their experiences with such a process. In-
depth interviews were conducted with six learners enrolled in an accelerated, degree-
completion program at Covenant College. The adults’ experiences in the assessment
module reflect a preoccupation with meeting its technical or instrumental challenges.
While they describe strong feelings and emotions associated with this process, there
is less evidence that the process facilitates a reworking of their prior experiences or

greater self-awareness as learners.

Copyright by
FALINDA SUE HARTSUFF GEERLING
2003

DEDICATION
In loving memory of

My grandmother, Leota Melba Taylor, who would have been 98 years young
tomorrow, October 21, 2003, and continues to be my role model and guardian angel

and

My friend, Diane Teska, who at 37 died too young, but remains my inspiration and
muse

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With deep appreciation I acknowledge the following people who encouraged

and supported me on this 7 1/2 year learning experience. First, my committee

members were:

Dr. John Dirkx, chair, teacher, and coach
Dr. Mary Kennedy, teacher and mentor

Dr. Rhonda Egidio, teacher and cheerleader
Dr. Stephen Kaagan, teacher and role model

Dr. Marilyn Amey, counselor

Second, my family members and friends were:

Robert R Geerling, husband

Mr. and Mrs. Paul (Barbara) Hartsufl‘, parents

Kalista A. Castine, sister

Aaron J. C. Goryl, Carolyn A. Geerling-GoryL Benjamin P., and
Kevin R. Geerling, children

Patricia A. Smith

Rita C. Citron

Sandra A. Maxim

Jolan A. Webster

Dr. Chin Yook Kong, Malaysia

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION ..................................................... l
The Research Rationale ........................................... 3
The Theoretical Framework ....................................... 8
The Research Problem ........................................... 9
The Analytical Framework ........................................ 9
Definitions of Terms ............................................. 10
Intended Audiences .............................................. 11

CHAPTER TWO

REVIEW OF LITERATURE ............................................ 13
Development and Growth of PLA .................................. 13
Theoretical Framework ........................................... 19

CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY .................................................... 29
Research Design ................................................ 29
Context and Setting ............................................. 30
Selection of Participants .......................................... 35
Data Collection Instruments and Procedures .......................... 35
Analysis of the Data ............................................. 38

CHAPTER FOUR

FINDINGS .......................................................... 41
Moving into Module Two ........................................ 41
Accommodating Writer’s Self-Identity .............................. 48
Connecting the Particular to the General ............................. 63
Sharing Stories ................................................. 70
Receiving “Trusted” Feedback ..................................... 76
Looking Back at the Process of Writing Life Learning Papers ............ 80
Conclusion .................................................... 88

CHAPTER FIVE

DISCUSSION ........................................................ 90
Theoretical Implications .......................................... 91
Practical Implications ........................................... 108
Further Research Implications .................................... 109
Conclusion ................................................... 111

APPENDICES ...................................................... 116

REFERENCES ...................................................... 142

vi

LIST OF FIGURES

Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning ................................. 20

vii

Chapter One
Introduction

With the increased number of adults returning to college and the grth of
higher education catering to their needs, Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) has
become a common practice among colleges and universities. Prior Learning
Assessment is a process in which the adult students’ experiences outside of the
college classroom are evaluated based on standards established by the institution.
College credit is then granted based on those standards.

For the most part, these standards call for the students’ experiences to be
occupational or work-related. Since 1974, the Council of Adult and Experiential
Learning (CAEL), which has been a leader in promoting PLA, has set the following
as its number one priority: to research and promote the formal assessment and
recognition of college-level learning of two kinds not commonly recognized by credit
or advancement in standing: 1) that acquired before the assessment by the current
institution and not previously transcripted; 2) that acquired under the sponsorship of
the current institution via practice, internships, apprenticeships, and other hands-on
experiences occurring off campus (Lamdin, 1992, p. 68). In short, knowledge
acquired by students within work or professional settings such as nursing, providing
customer service, or computer programming receives top priority in the translation of
“prior” learning experiences into college credits. In her text, Earn College Credit for
What you Know, Lamdin (1992) cites almost 1,500 US. accredited institutions of
higher education that provide some level of PLA for occupational related experiences.

This list resulted from a survey conducted by CAEL in 1991.

However, none of these institutions has extended its practice of Prior Learning
Assessment to include experiences other than work related. Therefore, Covenant
College (CC)—a small, church-based, liberal arts institution in the Midwest—may be
unique among institutes of higher learning in that it does have a program in which
students may earn college credit for other than their work related experiences. The
traditional methods of PLA--portfolio development and national standardized tests
such as CLEP and DANTES—are also offered. These methods are based on the
traditional occupational or previous ally non-transcripted knowledge. In its
accelerated Adults Studies Program, CC also has a required PLA course in each of its
three major curricula. This course is called WRT 312, Critical Analysis and Research
Writing. It provides a way for its adult students to earn college credit for alternative
ways of knowing.

For the purposes of this study, these ways of knowing will be referred to as
“private learning.” This is knowledge that comes from experiences in the context or
setting of the home or family life. Examples of this kind of learning would be
knowledge about marriage, parenting, divorce, disease, or death. Furthermore,
knowledge acquired in the context or setting of work or the community will now be
referred to as “public learning.” For the purposes of this study, Prior Learning
Assessment will now be referred to as the process of defining, documenting,
measuring, evaluating, and granting credit for learning acquired through [work or
occupational] experiences (Lamdin, 1992, p. 244). Assessment of Prior Private
Learning (APPL) will be referred to as the process in which home or family life

experiences are evaluated and granted college credits. In addition to the different

contexts in which these two kinds of learning take place, another distinction is that
private learning tends to have more of an affective or emotional dimension. Thus,
when it is being assessed in a public setting such as a college, it may be more
problematic than the assessment of public learning.

However, in contrast to work-related PLA, there is relatively little information
on the life-related APL or how it is experienced by adult learners. There does seem
to be strong affective or emotional component of APL, in contrast to the more
cognitive or rational nature of PLA. Because of this apparent difference and lack in
the literature of the seemingly more affective APL, the purpose of this research study
is to develop a deeper understanding of how returning adult learners experience the
assessment of their private learning.

From the following brief history of the development of Prior Learning
Assessment, it will be shown that very little, if any, research lms been focused on
APL and why this oversight seems worthy of further study.

The Research Rationale

For some 30 years, beginning after WWII and throughoutthe 19608 and
19703, the public credentialing educatioml “movement” and the private, non-
credentialing, training “movement” grew along side of each other. With the
“emergence of the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) in the United
States as the energetic leader for PLA, a pattern for its development was established”
(Thomas, 2001, p. 516). Thomas adds that “while PLA continues to grow worldwide,
the combination of specific demand and supply that existed in the United States

remains . . . unique to [this] country” (2001, p. 515).

Kett (1994) supports this notion. He says,

While set within the context of demographic change, the phenomenon of

college reentry in the 19705 and 19803 cannot be explained merely by the

aging of the population. Both the size of the pool and the rate of enrollment
increased among older students, who enrolled primarily to acquire degrees in
such fields as business, engineering, health, and computer science. (Kett,

1994,p.431)

In the United States, Prior Learning Assessment has grown the fastest in
technical colleges, “where objectives can be most clearly identified and
demonstrated” In other academic areas such as medicine or law, there is “less
‘supply-side’ initiative; the information [about PLA] . . . penetrates populations more
slowly” ('I'honns, 2001, p. 517).

Yet, employees, workers, and others outside of the middle class professions
and academy are still confi'onted with the overwhelming barriers of the
bureaucratically structured, multi- leveled sequence of related jobs and the
corresponding, required educational certificates that are needed to step up that
cherished career ladder (Kett, 1994, p 433). Kett (1994) also points out these cultural
norms could lmve been otherwise. For instance, governments and corporations could
have decided to use “fewer highly credentialed employees” (p. 433). However,
because organizations tend to hire those who are like themselves, managers write job
descriptions that include educational credentials like their own in the name of fairness

and efliciency.

According to Thomas (2001), with its promise of acknowledging learning
outcomes achieved by workers and other “outsiders” to the bureaucratic systems of
education and business in our society, PLA offers a unique opportunity for these
students in their existing and familiar cultural roles to at last confront, with some
confidence, sectors of the formal education system that have appeared impenetrable
Thomas adds that PLA is also an opportunity for the “cultural reformation of
education” (p. 517).

Just as many see PLA as an opportunity for educational reform in the
academy, many others either misunderstand or dismiss it. Their main complaint is
PLA is not college-level learning, so how could they possible evaluate and grant
college credit for the learning outcomes or learning process presented by the learners
themselves. Perhaps as a counter balance to this criticism, PLA has been studied
quite extensively by its greatest supporter, CAEL (Flint & Associates, 1999), and
others; most notably, Mandell & Michelson (1990), Michelson (1996a; 1996b; 1996c,
1997), and Whitaker (1989). However, there seems to be no literature on APL.
Michelson talks about one program at the First Nations Technical Institute (FNTI) in
Canada. This program uses portfolio development to explore “a wide range of
individual and collective learning” (Michelson, 1997, p. 44). According to Michelson
(1997), a partnership between FNTI and Loyalist College allows students in this
Tyendinaga Mohawk territory in southeastern Ontario, who are nnjoring in human
service fields, to apply for credit for prior learning and to earn diplomas that are the

equivalent to U.S. associate’s degrees (p. 45).

FNTI’s approach to the assessment of prior learning has developed in the
aboriginal or native traditions and history. Michelson (1097) explains,

According to their [FNTI aboriginal faculty] approach, the first peoples of

North America have a collective experience of “ethnostress” caused by the

violent conquest leading to cultural and economic dislocation. That

dislocation continues to disrupt collective and personal identity, producing
such social problems as alcohol dependency, child abuse, and chronic
unemployment, and contributing to numerous psychic and intellectual scars

that interfere with the ability to learn. (p. 45)

Michelson points out that this approach to Prior Learning Assessment,
structured in FNTI’s portfolio development or “documented portraits,” is based on
two principles of aboriginal teachings that differ distinctly from “Emopean traditions
of knowledge” (p. 45).

First, rather than assuming that learning is essentially a cognitive process,

portfolio development at FNTI is grounded in aboriginal perspectives about

knowledge that put the spirit, not the head, at the core. “Humans are physical
beings endowed with mind and heart (emotions) and empowered by spirit”

(Hill, 1995, p. 43, as cited in Michelson, 1997, p. 45) Learning is a holistic

process that requires the spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and physical aspects

of self. (p. 45)

Nevertheless, according to Michelson (1997), because Loyalist College is
FNTI’s accrediting partner in the human services fields, the portfolios that are used as

the basis for college credits must meet imposed definitions of competence as well as

FNTI’s definitions. Thus, the section of the students’ portfolios that is devoted to
application for credit uses a narrow definition of competence as “the things you know
how to do” (p. 47). In other words, the students’ prior “life experiences” and the
resulting knowledge that was produced in private and under a great deal of emotional
and psychological stress is reduced to “a series of competency statements” that use
both “task analysis” and “learning analysis” and follow the usual logic of portfolio
development; namely, they distinguish between what students have done and what
they learned cognitively and rationally (Michelson, 1997, p. 47).

But what if that spiritual or emotional learning was assessed for credit for
prior learning? What if in order to earn college credits for prior learning, the
students’ knowledge did not have to derive from professional experiences or match
some specific institutional courses, as it is in most PLA-granting colleges and
universities in North America? What would that program look like and what would
be the nature of this experience? Furthermore, during this Assessment of Prior
Private Learning process, how would the students describe the learning that they
experience? How would they describe the key characteristics or attributes of this
learning? And finally, how do they navigate the transition fiom private learners to
public students? What is the nature of this transition? In the 30 years since PLA
programs first began to gain momentum and acceptance in higher education, these
questionshave yettobestudied. This isaserious gapinthe literatureofPLAand
therefore is the rationale for this research proposal.

1 have also observed in my own practice and research (Geerling, 2000) that

the PLA process affords the potential for either transforrnative learning (Mezirow,

1991) or the confirmation of prior self-development or self-transformation.
Therefore, the intent of this study was to add not only to my own knowledge, but also
to both the experience-based and transforrnative learning discourses in adult
education.
The Theoretical F rarnework of the Research

Prior Learning Assessment and specifically Assessment of Prior Private
Learning are both grounded in two well known adult learning theories; namely,
experiential learning (i.e., learning by doing) and adult learning for personal
development and change (i.e., learning from prior experience). Perhaps the best
know experiential learning theorist is David A. Kolb (1984). In his seminal work,

Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development has

 

spawned many other studies, theories, and practices in adult learning and teaching
(Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985; Merriam & Caffarella, 1991; Mezirow, 1990). For
instance, at CC Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning is used in the APL process as
the basis for writing or organizing documents called Life Learning Papers (LLP).
Thesepapemarethenusedbyfacuhyandotherfiainedevaluatommdetemmethe
equivalent college credits for the experiential learning demonstrated within them.
Leamingtowriteandeamingcollegecredits forprior learningaretlreprimary
purpose of APL. Yet both my professional experience and the literature support the
notion that the students also gain more awareness of themselves as persons. As they
revisit and reconstruct painful and hurtful prior private experiences, the learners ofien
stir up strong feelings and emotions with which they are faced with a choice—either

reconcile with them as they write their Life Learning Paper or risk failing the writing

module and perhaps the entire program (Dirkx, 1997). Although this may not be an
intentional outcome of the assessment of prior learning process, it is grounded in what
Pratt (1998) calls either the developmen ” or “nurturing” perspective of adult
teaching and learning.
The Research Problem

In order to make a contribution to the scholarship that flames this research,
that is, adult learning, in general, and experiential or experience-based learning, in
particular, I propose to study the following question: What is the natm‘e of the
experience that Covenant College Adult Studies students have in the Assessment of
Prior Private Learning course, WRT 312, Critical Analysis and Research Writing?

The following subquestions are also proposed:

1. How do students describe the learning that they experience from APL?

2. How do students describe the key characteristics or attributes of this
learning?

3. How do students describe how they navigated the transition from
private learnerstopublic students? What isthenatureofthe
transition?

The Analytical Framework for the Research
With regard to data analysis, I plan to combine the guidelines of both Seidman
(1991) and Strauss (1987). In both Seidman’s in-depth or phenomenological
interviewing analysis and Strauss’s modified grounded theory analysis, they
recommend that the researcher begins collecting data before any hypotheses or

problems have been formulated, other than the general ones. In this way, the

researcher stays very close to the data and the hypotheses, problems, and questions
come out of that phenomenon or data. Eventually, profiles (Seidman’s term) or axils
(Strauss’s term) emerge from the evidence. These categories are further defined or
refined until a full, dense phenomenological or modified grounded theory is written.
In this study the latter is the intention.

Definitions of Terms for the Research
Adult Students: college or university students who are older than traditional higher
education students, that is, at least 23 years old; financially self-supporting; usually
working at least part time; usually female; married, divorced, or single parents with at
least one child; sometimes responsible for aging family members.
Adult Learners: adult students who enter college or university classrooms with a
vast amount of learning or knowledge that was gained in other contexts such as
personal or professional experiences.
Assessment of Prior Private Learning (APPL): the interface or context in which
public learning and private learning meet; a process in which adult students earn
college credit (public acknowledgment or recognition) for their private learning; a
process in which adult learners make public or formalize their informal or private
learning; a transitional procedure from adult learners to adult students, usually
demonstrated via a formal examination, an interview, or a portfolio; at Covenant
College the APL demonstration is an average 25-page paper formatted upon Kolb’s
Model of Experiential Learning.
Private Learning: personal, private, informl, nonformal contexts in which mostly

adults acquire knowledge; e.g. work, career, hobby, marriage, divorce.

10

Public Learning or Education: formal, controlled contexts for acquiring knowledge,
designed mainly for children and adolescents; e.g. elementary through postsecondary
schools.
Prior Learning Assessment (PLA): See Assessment of Prior Private Learning
(APPL).
Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning: first espoused by David Kolb in 1984; as
applied in PLA at CC, this theory states that the cycle of experiential learning has
four modes or centers of activity, beginning with a concrete experience (CE) tlnt is
distinguished by its feelings and relationships; next, reflective observations (R0) are
distinguished by its thoughts and insights into the perspectives or interpretations of
the CE; third, abstract concept is the theory or principle that was learned from the
synthesis ofCE and R0 and is first stated in the learner’s own words and then
supported by the literature fi'om the appropriate academic discipline; last, active
experimentation(AE) istbetestorapplicationofthe AC bothinasimilaranda
different context fiom the CE.
Life Learning Paper: documentation for PLA at CC; based most often on the
personal, private learning of the adult students, the thesis statement usually includes
three aspects or learning outcomes; each learning outcome is developed using Kolb’s
Model of Experiential Learning; may be used in three different ways—to earn college
credit for prior learning; to earn credit for WRT 312; to waive English 102.
Intended Audiences for the Research
Because of the nature of this study, it is intended for the following audiences:

1. Adult Learners and Students

11

2. College and University Instructors and Professors

3. College and University Administrators

12

Chapter Two
Review of the Literature

In this chapter, I will provide the following: More description of the research
and theory surrounding the assessment of prior learning; how the proposed study
addresses some of the questions about the use of this process in assessing
nonworking-related life experiences; and the theoretical frameworks that shape and
inform how we might pursue these questions.

Development and Growth of PLA

Since 1974, Prior Learning Assessment and the Council for Adult and
Experiential Learning have grown together. “CAEL began as a three year project
(1974-1977) of the Educational Testing Service (Princeton) under the name
‘Cooperative Assessment of Experiential Learning,” according to Morris Keaton,
former president of CAEL (as cited in Whitaker, 1989, p. xi).

That project was funded by the Carnegie Corporation, with later help fi'om the
Ford Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and the fund for the Improvement of
Postsecondary Education (Whitaker, 1989, p. xiii). The result was the first CAEL
publication that combined 26 previous CAEL books, monographs, and research
reports. It was called Principles of Good Practice in the Assessment of Em’ ntial
mxwmingham, 1977), and for the next 12 years it “influenced the
development of new roles for experiential learning and served as a guidepost for
quality assurance” (Whitaker, 1989, p. viii).

After the initial three-year research and development effort, CAEL began to

operate under a new charter as a flee-standing association of colleges and universities

l3

named the Council for the Advancement of Experiential Learning. Then, in 1985, it
again changed its name to the Council of Adult and Experiential Learning to better
reflect“. . . the emerging implications of its initial commitments,” according to
Keaton (Whitaker, 1989, p. xi).

That same year Susan Sirnosko wrote the book, LargCollegeCredit for What
you Know, which was published by CAEL, and in 1988, she wrote Assessing
Learning: A CAEL Hafndbook for Faculty. Keaton points out, “With the Sirnosko
handbook in place, there remained the task of providing a systematic explication of
underlying standards and principles [of PLA]” (Whitaker, 1989, p. ix). This need was
fulfilled by Urban Whitaker in 1989 with the CAEL publication, Assessing Learning:
Standards, Principles. & Procedures. which replaced Willingharn’s Principles and
became the “Bible” for theorists and practitioners of experiential learning and Prior
Learning Assessment.

Then, in a 1990 book published by CAEL, Mandell and Michelson described
eight approaches and fourteen models of PLA. The authors were careful to point out
that the eight approaches were not intended as “separate curricular outlines,” but as
“emphases within a single intellectual exploration, clusters of interrelated concerns
around which appropriate subject matter can be organized” (p. 4). These eight
approaches included orientations toward: a) Academic Skills; b) College Orientation;
c) Personal Exploration; d) The Meaning of Education; e) Careers; 1) Introduction to
a Field; g) The Experience of Work; and h)Degree Design.

Of the 14 programs that were chosen by the authors as exemplary of these

approaches, only two used “Personal Exploration.” Sinclair Community College, in

14

Dayton, OH, combined this approach with a “Careers” orientation, so, in essence, its
PLA program focuses more on work-related experiences than personal or family
incidents. The Office of Continuing Studies, The American University, in
Washington, DC, Assessment of Prior Learning Program (APEL) also has a
“Personal Exploration” approach. However, this orientation looks at human
experiences through the lens of social constructs such as gender, race, and culture. In
both of these institutions, the purpose of the PLA portfolios seemed to be more of a
means for the students to articulate their professional and academic goals than to
translate their nonacademic learning experiences into college credits. None of the
processes or models described my Mandell and Michelson involved the assessment of
adult knowledge based on personal or private experiences.

In 1999, the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning commissioned a
benchmarking study in collaboration with the American Productivity & Quality
Center. This organization was founded by C. Jackson Grayson Jr. in 1977. In 1992,
it established a service called the International Benchmarking Clearinghouse. “Its
purpose is to help organizations learn how to benchmark as well as to find, adapt, and
implement ‘best practices,”’ according to Grayson (Flint, et a1, 1999, p. v).

For this study’s objectives, it is not necessary to go into the details of the
CAEL/APQC study, except to say that out of the 34 institutions that responded to a
screening survey, six were chosen for further study based on 16 descriptors of “best
processes in adult learning, not best institutions” (Flint, et a1, 1999, p. 16). What is of
interest to this study is that all six institutions used some form of PLA; yet, not one

came close to using the same process as Covenant College. Of the five institutions

15

that had established programs (one program was only two years old at the time of the
study), they all used portfolios linked to specific courses with essays and work- or
education-based documentation.

Nevertheless, the scholarship of experiential learning has significantly
contributed to the growth and development of Prior Learning Assessment (PLA).
Some of the PLA research hinted at the afl'ective dimension of the process. Students
gained a greater appreciation of learning across the life span, as a result of developing
their PLA portfolios, reported Richard Roughton, executive director of The Office of
Continuing Studies:

Students take much pride in their completed portfolios. When they receive

their credit awards there is a strong sense of accomplishment, accompanied by

a great sigh of relief. At the same time students are aware that the experience

has united varied forms of learning and can see the rest of formal education

notsimplyas unfinished businessbutasanotherstepinaprocessthathas

spanned their lives. (Mandell & Michelson, 1990, p. 81)

Brenda Krueger, former director of Sinclair College’s Credit for Lifelong
Learning Program (CLLP), concurred with Roughton, “Students . . . learn how to
extract learning fi'om experience, and they take this new awareness of the potential
for experiential learning with them into present and future experiences. They are far
better equipped to be lifelong learners” (as cited in Mandell & Michelson, 1990, p.
61). Krueger continued:

It became evident that earning college credits was only one outcome of the

portfolio development process for many students. While they may have

16

entered CLLP to earn college credits, other outcomes became more important

than this original goal. Both statistics and students’ subjective feedback

indicate that the objectives of the course are being met, as is the broader
purpose of meeting the needs of the Sinclair adult population. . . . The

comment of one student is more encouraging than any statistic. She wrote: “I

would highly recommend this course to anyone starting or returning to college

at age thirty-five or over even if there wasn’t one competency that earned

credit.” (Mandell & Michelson, 1990, p. 62)

Thus, there is evidence of experience-based learning tint is occurring through
the process of Prior Learning Assessment. Yet, there is very little information about
how this learning occurs or what form it takes. The question remains, What is the
natureofthe learningthatoccursinPLAcoursesorseminars? Howareadults
changed fi'om anxious, confused, insecure students into confident, secure lifelong
learners? What elements of the PLA process contribute to this remarkable transition?
Very few studies have focused on PLA as a learning phenomenon. A review of the
literatureinthisarearevealed no studiesthatexplorethenatureofthe learningthat
transpires as adult students assess their life or private experiences before entering a
college classroom and transform them into acceptable forms that will earn them
college credits.

Moreover, the studies that have been done in regard to PLA have been done
on programs that focus on work-related or public experiences. These processes stress
knowledge, specific cognitive competencies, or skills that learners derive from

experiences within particular occupations. For example, both programs that were

17

noted above—Sinclair Community College and The American University, The Office
of Continuing Studies—use an academic structure of required texts, weekly
classroom sessions, written learning objectives, and student activities and
assignments. The assessment of prior experiential learning is only one objective out
of four or five for both PLA processes. For instance, at Sinclair CC,

Students in CLLP [Credit for Lifelong Learning Program] . . . do not only

articulate prior learning, they are expected to acquire new, college level

learning as a result of the course. They learn how to develop life and career
goals and an action plan for making those goals a reality. It is equally

important that they develop the ability to extract learning from experiences, a

skill that has applications in their future as well as their past. (Mandell &

Michelson, 1990, p. 55).

Although Sinclair CC, The Office of Continuing Education, and other PLA
programs see articulation of old knowledge and the acquisition of new knowledge as
equally important, they appear to have paid little attention to the notion of equity
between the afl‘ective and cognitive dimensions of learning or between private or
public experiences. While the literature on formal learning experiences stresses the
importance of the afl‘ective or emotional dimension of learning, there is almost no
attention to this aspect in the scholarship of assessment of prior learning.

In modem English-speaking cultures the affective dimension of learning is
ofien overlooked or denied. Yet, “[e]motions and feelings are key pointers to both
possibilities for, and barriers to, learning” (Bond, Keogh, & Walker, 1993, p. 15).

Two key sources within the learners’ context either positively or negatively influence

18

them; that is, their past experience and the role of others. Their confidence and self-
esteem also afl‘ect their learning. “Engagement with learning tasks is related to belief
in success” (Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1993, p. 15). For learners to learn successfully
from their prior experience, they must weave a course of reliance on their own past
experience and acceptance of the support or challenge fi‘om others. In other words
they must acknowledge the tension between their own agency and the influence of
others in the process of making meaning of their experience.

This is the situation or context in which Covenant College adult students find
themselves as the move into the second course or module of their program. It is an
experience-based learning environment that has yet to be studied, and therefore it
seems that research of this kind is long overdue. There appears to be a missing link
between the theory and practice of PLA. Perhaps by better understanding the nature
of the learning in a PLA classroom, especially when the experiences being assessed
tend to be emotionally charged, adult educators could improve their practice both in a
PLA and non-PLA classroom.

Prior Learning Assessment and specifically Assessment of Prior Private
Learning are both grounded in two well known theoretical orientations to adult
learning: experiential or experience-based learning and learning for personal
development and change or learning fi‘om prior experience.

Theoretical Framework
APPL as Framed in Experiential or Experience-based Adult Learning
One of the most well-known models or theories of experiential or experience-

based learning is that of David A. Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning. His

19

Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning

Concrete
' Experience
(CE)
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OtExperience
Applying» durations
new
-Hawhavayouusedthehamtng WW .
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Experimerm OR Patterns and
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we: and differed M Differences (90)

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Figure 1

(Basic Model hem D. A. Kalb and 1!. Fry, "Toward an Applied Theory of Experiential Learning.’ Cary
Cooper. ed. W. [load/News: John Wiley and Sons. 1975.)

20

seminal work, Experiential Learning: Experience as the Sou_rce of Learningapd
Developmen_t, has spawned many other studies, theories, and practices in adult
learning and teaching (Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985; Merriam & Calfarella, 1991;
Mezirow, 1990).

Kolb (1984) defines learning as “the process of whereby knowledge is created
through the transformation of experience” (p. 38). He adds that this definition
“emphasizes several critical aspects of the learning process as viewed from the
experiential perspective” (p. 38). These include: 1) the emphasis on the process of
adaptation and learning as opposed to content or outcomes; 2) knowledge is a
transformation process, constantly changing and developing, not an acquisition
process in which it is gained and transmitted; 3) learning transforms experience both
objectively (i.e., the person’s environment) and subjectively (i.e., the person’s internal
state); 4) to understand learning, the nature of knowledge must be understood and
vice versa (pp. 36 & 38.

Knowledge, according to Kolb (1984), is the result of the transaction between
social knowledge and personal knowledge. This transaction occurs in a process
called learning. Hence, learning is both a process and an outcome. The outcome is
knowledge. To understand epistemology—the origins, nature, methods, and limits of
knowledge—one must understand the psychology of learning and vice versa (pp. 37-
38).

In his Model of Experiential Learning, Kolb (1984) attempts to explain this
dialectic tension between the objective and subjective nature of learning and

knowledge. He graphically depicts his theory as a circle with the following “four

21

adaptive learning modes” or centers of activity: 1) Concrete Experience (CE); 2)
Reflective Observations (R0); 3) Abstract Concepts (AC); 4) Active Experimentation
(AE). (See Figure I.) Kolb (1984) describes these CE/AC and RO/AE axes as “two
distinct dimensions, each representing two dialectically opposed adaptive
orientations” (pp. 40-41). He further explains:

The structural bases of the learning process lie in the transactions among these

four adaptive modes and the way in which the adaptive dialectics get resolved.

To begin with, notice that the abstract/concrete dialectic is one of prehension,

representing two different and opposed processes of grasping or taking hold of

experience in the world—either through reliance on conceptual interpretation
and symbolic representation, a process I will call comprehension, or through
reliance on the tangible, felt qualities of immediate experience, what I call
apprehension. The active/reflective dialectic, on the other hand, is one of
transformation, representing two opposed ways of transforming that grasp or

“figurative representation” of experience—either through internal reflection, a

process I will call intention, or active external manipulation of the exterml

world, here called extension. (p. 41)

With this structure and definition of experiential learning, Kolb says,
“Knowledge results from the combination of grasping experience and transforming it.
And since there are two dialectically opposed forms of prehension and, similarly, two
opposed ways of transforming that prehension, the result is four different elementary
forms of knowledge” (pp. 41-42). Kolb (1984) calls these forms divergent

knowledge (experience grasped through apprehension (CE) and transformed through

22

intension (RO)), assimilative knowledge (experience grasped through comprehension
(AC) and transformed through intention (RO)), convergent knowledge (experience
grasped through comprehension (AC) and transformed through extension (AE)), and
accommodative knowledge (experience grasped by apprehension (CE) and
transformed by extension (AE)) (p. 42). In essence, Kolb’s Model of Experience
Learning demonstrates that “learning, and therefore knowing, requires both a grasp or
figurative representation of experience and some transformation of that
representation” (p. 42). Neither the former nor the latter can work alone. Simply
perceiving an experience cannot be called learning, and there can be no
transformation alone without some state or experience to change or transform. This
particular aspect of Kolb’s work was informed by Piaget (1971, 1978). Kolb was also
influenced by other earlier theorists of experiential learning such as Dewey (1934,
1938, 1958, 1910) and Lewin (1951).

At CC, Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning is also used in the APPL
process as the basis for both critically thinking about and organizing the Life
Learning Papers. In other words the adult students learn how to write by writing, in
general, and in using Kolb’s Model, in particular, as a model for critically reflecting
upon and writing about their prior experience. The resulting documents are then used
by faculty and other trained evaluators to determine the equivalent college credits for
the prior experiential learning demonstrated within them.

A PPL as Framed as Adult Learning for Personal Development and Change or

Learning fiom Prior Experience

23

Although learning to write and earning college credits for prior learning are
the primary purposes of APPL, both my professional experience and the literature
support the notion that the students also gain more awareness of themselves as
persons and lifelong learners. This outcome is grounded in the perspective of human
developmental or growth potential of learning or learning from prior experience.
According to Merriam and Caffarella (1991), the two psychologists who have
contributed the most to this perspective are Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.

“Maslow (1970), considered the founder of humanistic psychology, proposed
a theory of human motivation based on a hierarchy of needs” (Merriam and
Catfarella, 1991, p. 132). This deficit model, often graphically depicted as a pyramid,
shows physiological needs such as food and water, at the bottom or base of the
hierarchy. As with all the nwds, these must be met before humans can deal with the
next level of need, that is, shelter and safety. The levels then proceed upward through
the need for social acceptance and love, self-esteem, and finally self-actuation.
Maslow defined this last, most challenging level as a person’s desire to become all
that he or she is capable of becoming. For him, self-actualization is the goal of
learning and educators should strive to bring this about (Merriam and Caffarella,
1991, pp. 132-133).

Both Maslow (1970) and Rogers (1983) viewed learning as a form of
psychotherapy. “In fact, his “client-centered therapy” is often equated with student-
centered learning. In both education and therapy, Rogers is concerned with
significant learning that leads to personal growth and development” (Merriam and

Caffarella, 1991, p. 133).

24

The characteristics of this orientation toward learning include the following:

1. Personal involvement—the affective and cognitive aspects of a person
should be involved in the learning event.

2. Self-initiated—a sense of discovery must come from within.

3. Pervasive—the learning makes a difference in the behavior, the attitudes,
perhaps even the personality of the learner.

4. Evaluated by the learner—the learner can best determine whether the
experience is meeting a need.

5. Essence is meaning—when experiential learning takes place, its meaning to
the learner becomes incorporated into the total experience. (Merriam and
Caffarella, 1991, pp. 133-134)

Tennant (2000) points out that my other scholars have been influenced by the
work of Maslow and Rogers. These include Havighurst, Erickson, Levinson, Gould,
Loevinger, and Labouvie-Vief (p. 88). However, the adult development and change
orientation toward learning is not without its critics. Most notable is Gilligan (1986),
who was among the first to challenge what she considered the dominant rmle
perspective on adult development. In particular, she argues that such terms as
“separateness,” “autonomy,” and “independence,” which are common markers of
developmental progress, are essentially male values and that females value
relationships and responsibilities, empathy and attachment, and interdependence
rather than independence. In short, the developmental learning literature gives too
little focus on the power of social forces in shaping the courses of peoples’ lives

(Tennant, 2000, pp. 88-89).

25

Whether developmental adult learning is too “self”-centered is beyond the scope
of this proposed study. But it is an important theoretical underpinning of the
assessment of prior learning process. What is of interest here is Tennant’s notion of a
more balanced theory of adult learning, that is, the understanding of selfas a narrative
or story. “In this view, identity is essentially a psychosocially constructed narrative
that integrates the reconstructed past, perceived present and anticipated filture; in
short, it is a story of the self” (Tennant, 2000, p. 93).

Because the Life Learning Papers are, in essence, the students’ stories about
what, how, and why they have learned from their prior experiences, APPL may be an
ideal setting for adult learners to have an opportunity to retell their mrratives and find
not only new or deeper meaning of their life stories, but also of their sense of self.
“The basic firnction of a life story is integration—it binds together disparate elements
of the self” (Tennant, 2000, p. 94).

Tennant (2000) concludes his discussion of self-narration by pointing out that
other theories of adult education such as Brookfield’s (1995) critical reflection and
Mezirow’s (1991) critical self-assessment all use the same “lens” to look at self, that
is, autobiography. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental difference between this
literary form and Tennant’s notion of self-narration. He points out that Brookfield’s
notion of “autobiography is not seen as something that is open to reinterpretation and
re-autboring. Instead, itisseenassomethingthatneedstobe‘flrnearthed”soasto

expose its influence on our beliefs and practices [as individuals in social contexts and

roles]” (p. 97).

26

In contrast, the self-narrative is conceptualized as an accurate foundation or
discovery of beliefs and practices, which is accomplished through the reflection on
and confrontation of distorted assumptions, attitudes, and behaviors by the means of
storytelling. “The emphasis at the outset then is on discovery rather than creation:
the questions posed are, ‘Who am I?’ and, ‘Havel got it right?” and, “What is the
secret of my desire?’” However, an autobiography is used to answer questions such
as “Is this rendering of experience/autobiography desirable?” and, ‘What
relationships can be invented or modulated through such a rendering of the self?’” In
other words, with self-narrative the meaning of self in a society or culture becomes
“problematized” or “discovered.” But with autobiography it is an exploration of
multiple relationships, possibilities, or positions “in terms of race, gender, class,
sexual orientation, and [ability] . . . .” (T ennant, 2000, p. 98). With the former it is a
question of discovery and creation of self. With the latter it is more a description and
explanation of self. The nature of the Life Learning Papers could be defined as more
self-narrative than autobiographic, and thus Tenmnt’s (2000) distinction between
these two ways of thinking and writing about self is important to this study.

Finally, Bereiter (1990) distinguishes in his discussion of educational learning
theory the difference between “schoolwork” or task-learning context and an
“intentional” or personal learning context, which often occurs “outside school
contexts.” Bereiter (1990) oflem evidence of how these two “learning modules”
could be brought together, that is, studies on writing suggest that older learners are
more successful than younger ones in planning how to incorporate both schoolwork

writing and intentional writing in order to fulfill both their academic and personal

27

goals. How or why this incorporation or acquisition of “knowledge telling” and
“knowledge transforming” occurs over time has yet to be studied longitudinally. But
since Assessment of Prior Private Learning seems to a setting where these two kinds
of learning experiences (i.e., schoolwork and personal) come together, this study is
intended to add to the research and discourse of experiencede or adult learning

and development theory.

28

Chapter Three
Methodology

The overall purpose of this study was to add to the scholarship of experiential
or experience-based learning, Prior Learning Assessment, and adult learning (i.e.,
development, change, or transformation of self). Because of my present teaching
practice and prior research (Geerling, 2000), these discourses were of particular
interest to me. I have observed the powerful and deep learning experiences that adult
learners seem to have by revisiting or reconstructing often private or personal
episodes in their lives. Thus my purpose in this study was to draw a clearer word
picture or description of what this experience-based adult learning looks like.

The overarching research question that I posed was, What is the nature of the
experience that students in Covenant College Adult Studies Program lmve in the
Assessment of Prior Private Learning course, Critical Analysis and Research Writing.

The subquestions were:

1. How do students enrolled in Covenant College describe their
experiences in this course?
2. How do students describe the transition from private learners to public
studerfis? What is the nature ofthis transition?
Research Design

These questions were pursued through a qualitative research design. The
focus of this study was on the learners’ experiences within the APPL program. For
this reason the overall approach is informed by phenomological method (Seidman,

1991) and to a lesser degree ethnographic procedures (Spradley, 199?). As with all

29

qualitative or interpretive research frameworks, several assumptions informed and
guided this study: 1) Reality is subjective and multiple; 2) Interaction with the study’s
informants will occur; 3) The sample will be purposeful; 4) The informants may or
may not value their experiences with PLA as defined by CC; 5) No hypothesis will be
proven; and 6) Limited generalizability of the study is expected.

Context and Setting

Founded in 1873 Covenant College (CC) is a small, church-based, liberal arts
institution located in a small town in southwest Michigan. Beginning in the early
I9808 with its accelerated, degree-completion adult studies program, the college has
expanded throughout the state. It now has four regions (north, central, east, and
west). Throughout each region there are several offices. Thus the students, who
begin the program in cohorts of about 13, have convenient access to faculty, staff;
parking, and the classrooms. Because of its “lock-step” nature, once the students start
the program, they never have to register for a course or buy a book. These services
are provided by the program’s staff. .

In its Adult Studies Program, adult students complete their degrees (a
maximum of 64 credits) in a matter of 58 to 72 weeks. There are several ways that
this goal may be accomplished. First, the program’s courses or “modules” are only
four to six weeks. But when successfully completed, the students still earn between
two and four college credits. Although there appears to be less “seat time” in this
program, compared to traditional ones, more homework is required, particularly

heavy reading and writing assignments. For each module more than half the student’s

30

final grade is determined by the assessment of his or her final writing assignment,
which is an 8 — 10 page “critical synthesis paper.” There are no objective tests.

A second alternative way that students may earn college credits is to take
rational assessment tests. There is a fee for taking these tests, which are scheduled
throughout the academic year at either the regional sites or the local community
colleges.

A third way is provided by the college itself. It is called “professional service
and training (PST)” credits. The students, using appropriate documentation and form,
petition trained faculty or other evaluators, who determine and grant equivalent
college credits for the students’ professional or work-related learning experiences.
Because of their history and background, both of these ways of earning college
credits, whether national or institutional, tend to focus on the students’ instrumental
(i.e., technical or mechanistic) or communicative skills and knowledge.

However, Covenant College also has another alternative way for its adult
students to earn credit for their prior private experience, which tends to be more
affective or expressive in nature and the learning or knowledge is more
developmental or cmancipatory in nature. It is called Prior Learning Assessment
(PLA) or Assessment of Prior Private Learning (APPL) for the purposes of this study.
The course in which this process is taught is called Critical Analysis and Research
Writing.

This course was designed more than five years ago as a way to streamline the

APPL process and to better meet the academic needs of CC’s adult students, in

31

particular, the fear of writing and mechanical weaknesses. The overview of the six-
week course, which is the second required course in the program, is as follows:

Described most firndamentally, this module . . . is college-level thinking on

paper. . . . This course is offered for several reasons: 1) To emphasize the

importance of writing in your personal and professional lives; 2) To help you
earn college credits for your life experiences; 3) To improve your writing
skills as the primary tool for assessing your knowledge and understanding of
the material in each core module. . . . Kolb’s Model of Experiential learning
is used to think about and reconstruct life-learning experiences on paper.

(Geerling & Hultman, 1999, p. 1)

Kolb’s Model is introduced to the students during the second week of the
course. During the first week’s session, the students are introduced to a six-step
writing process. As that material is presented in class, the students’ first “critical
synthesis paper” (CSP) fi'om their first course is reviewed. This is their first high-risk
(graded) assignment. The intent of that review is twofold: to determine whether the
students have well written thesis statements in their first CSPs; and to emphasize the
connection between “prewriting” and the thesis statement as they begin writing their
life learning papers (LLPs). The prewriting techniques include “self-interviewing,”
“finding the instigating line or image,” or “brainstorming” (Murray, 1998, pp. 3-6).

That night the students are also given possible topic guidelines, which have
been approved by the appropriate college discipline or department such as
psychology, sociology, or biology. These topics typically include “Psychology of

Adjustment,” (e.g., career transition), “Family Disorganization,” (i.e., divorce), and

32

“Alcoholism” (i.e., the student’s or someone very close to him or her). But the topics
can be as unusual as custom fitting luxury aircraft or treating hoof disease in horses.
Whether common or rare, the topics are often determined by one conversation
between the student and the academic advisor during the admission process.
Moreover, they most often come fi'om the adult student’s personal or private life
experience. Rarely does a student write about his or her professional or work-related
experience.

During that first week of Module Two the students are asked not only to
revise and complete the final draft of their first critical synthesis paper, but also to
begin thinking and writing about at least three “learning outcomes” from their
experience that is topic of their life learning paper. These learning outcomes then
became the aspects or subtopics of their LLPs’ “working thesis statements.” Each
learning outcome is then developed within the paper according to Kolb’s Model of
Experiential Learning (Concrete Experience (CE), Reflective Observations (R0),
Abstract Concepts (AC), and Active Experimentation (AE)). That development is
called “once around the circle” and usually takes between six and eight pages.

By the third week, which, according to the curriculum, is “computer and
library research night,” the students are expected to have one “circle” completed. By
then, most students have a rudimentary understanding of Kolb’s Model and its
application to their LLPs. The presentation of library research techniques, according
to the curriculum, may be scheduled at a local community college library or done in

the classroom.

33

Some peer review is also scheduled for that night. The papers are shared in
small groups that may be determined by the same or similar topics of the students.
As prescribed by the curriculum, the students read their papers out loud to each other
and may use one of checklists provided in the module materials. These checklists are
designed to help the students look critically not only at the content, but also the
structure of their papers. The focus, however, for the peer review is on content and
structure, that is, the proper use of Kolb’s Model.

The fourth night, when two circles are expected to be done, is dedicated to
peer review. The fifth week each student meets individually with the instructor for
further review and revision of the paper. By then, a complete draft of the paper,
including introduction and conclusion, is expected. The sixth week is reserved for
additional individual conferences and for editing and proofreading between the
individual students and the instructor.

The life learning paper is submitted on the seventh week of Module Two, that
is, the 11th week of the program. Students may turn in as many as three copies—-one
for the instructor without any cover sheet, one for the academic advisor with a cover
petition for the Assessment of Prior Private Learning office, and a third for the
English department with a petition for an English waiver. Within another six to eight
weeks the students receive notice through the mail from the APPL office whether
they earned the college credits or must do a rewrite. If the former, they receive a
small envelope, containing only a congratulatory letter and a copy of the evaluation
form, indicating that their petition has been approved. If not, they receive a large

envelope with a copy of their paper, along with the evaluation form and a letter from

34

the evaluator, stating what revisions must be made before resubmitting the paper for
approval. The third and final option—“rejection”—is used only on rare occasions
when a student inadvertently writes on a “restricted” (i.e., not allowed) topic in his
program or is caught plagiarizing.
Selection of Participants

Potential participants were selected from members of two adult studies
cohorts in two different regions of Covenant College. The researcher did not instruct
Module Two or any other course for either group. The group consisted of fifteen
women and one man; all were in their 305. There were ten Caucasians and five
Blacks. All worked either full time or part time in various professional positions and
were majoring in either Family Life Education or Management of Organizational
Development. They both were scheduled to graduate in 2003.

From this larger group of sixteen, through informed consent (see Appendix
A), a purposeful sample of six informants was formed. Each was selected by his or
her willingness to meet with the researcher for three interviews for a minimum of an
hour each time. Each participant had successfirlly completed the module and earned a
passing grade on his or her life learning paper. In that way the data was rich and
robust for this qualitative study.
Data Collection Instruments and Procedures

Spradley (1979) was used to help focus on describing or interpreting the
meaning in the language of the informants or participants. He calls it “folk terms.”
As a researcher he is aware of what he calls “translation competence,” and he makes a

conscious effort to have his informants use their own native language to describe their

35

experiences. Although Spradley’s emphasis is primarily ethnographic, the guidelines
that he recommends were very helpful in this study. As the researcher, I have taught
WRT312 for five years and wanted to avoid making any assumptions about what the
informants had to say about the course or how they described it.

As a result of this awareness and caution of my hermeneutic bias, interview
protocols were carefirlly constructed and are included in Appendixes B, C, and D.
These protocols included “grand tour” questions, as well as “mini-tour questions,”

99 6‘

“example questions, experience questions,” and “native-language questions”
(Spradley, 1979).

The research consisted of a series of three interviews. Protocols were
developed, but were directed by the following general format. The first interview
(see Appendix B) established the context (Seidman, 1991) of the research
participant’s experience. Each participant was asked to tell as much as possible about
himself or herself relative to what brought him or her to Covenant College Adult
Studies Program and thus the APPL experience. For a profile of each of the
participants, see Appendix E.

The second interview (see Appendix C) allowed the participants to reconstruct
(Seidman, 1991) the details of their experience within the established context of,
Critical Analysis and Research Writing. Questions were carefirlly constructed and
asked in order to discover what the participants actually did in the course, not what
they thought or felt about the course. In particular, each participant was asked about

his or her relationships with the other students and the instructor.

36

The third and final interview (see Appendix D) encouraged the informants to
reflect (Seidman, 1991) on the meaning of their experience in the APPL course.
Here, questions about opinions and feelings were asked. For instance, some
questions that were asked included: “Given what you have said about your life before
you became an adult college student and given what you have said about your
experience in , how do you understand that experience now? What sense do you
make of it? Given what you have reconstructed in these interviews, where do you see
yourself going in the future?”

All eighteen interviews were conducted between May 14, 2002 and August
21, 2002, which was five months after the participants had all taken the assessment
course. With the exception of one informant, who was interviewed in her home, all
the other interviews took place in either an office or classroom of one of the two
regional sites. The first two interviews for each informant generally lasted 90
minutes. The third ones were usually shorter, lasting only about 45 minutes for each
informant. All the interviews were audio taped, and those tapes were transcribed by a
professional transcriber, resulting in about 500 pages of data. Four out of the six
informants also granted permission for the researcher to read their life learning
papers.

Another source of data is the curriculum and faculty guidelines. In
subsequent chapters these two documents will be referred to as only the “curriculum”
First written in 1998, this version was revised first in 1999 and more recently in 2002.

The authors were the coordinator of Prior Learning Assessment at Covenant College

andtheresearcher.

37

Analysis of the Data

A combination of the guidelines suggested by both Seidman (1991) and
Strauss (1987) was used to analyze the data collected from the 18 interviews. In both
Seidman’s in-depth or phenomenological interviewing analysis and Strauss’s
modified grounded theory analysis, they recommend that the researcher begins
collecting data before any hypotheses or problems have been formulated, other than
the general ones. In this way, the researcher stays very close to the data and the
hypotheses, problems, and questions come out of that phenomenon or data.
Eventually, profiles (Seidman, 1991) or axils (Strauss, 1987) emerge fi'om the
evidence. These categories are further defined or refined until a full, dense
phenomenological or modified grounded theory is written. In this study the latter was
the intention and the result.

The data analysis began September 2002 by reading the transcripts and
identifying very rudimentary categories such as “conditions,” “consequences,”
“interactions,” and “strategies or tasks” (Strauss, 1987). This first read-through was
an attempt to get a sense of each informant’s experience and to start answering basic
questions about the nature of that experience. Those questions included the
following:

o What were the conditions? What were consistent parts or elements of the
Module Two experience?
0 What were the common consequences or results of the experience?

0 Who were the players and how did they interact with each other?

38

o What were the typical strategies or tasks that were constructed or played out
during the experience?

Countless readings of transcripts, analysis memos, textual or thematic memos,
and collaborative memos or discussions were exchanged between the researcher and
her advisor between September 2002 and June 2003. QSR NVIVO, qualitative
software, was also used in the data analysis.

The first attempt to make sense of the data was a series of theoretical memos
(Strauss, 1987). Two memos or rudimentary analytical papers were written for four
of the six participants. The first memo attempted to trace the life history of the
participant and his or her explanation for coming to Covenant College. The second
memo was an attempt to describe the participant’s experience in Module Two.

This approach was aborted at the suggestion of the researcher’s advisor, as it
resulted in too many abstractions and speculations too early the data analysis. In
short, these memos moved away from the data too soon and failed to rennin
grounded in the data.

Eventually through continuous “axial coding” (Strauss, 1987) or
characterizing, either manually or electronically, categories began to emerge. These
categories tended to describe chronologically the participants’ experience in the
module. To clarify and define these categories a series of 42 analysis memos were
written. These memos compiled each of the participants’ responses to each of the
following events or activities that were identified from the data:

0 First night

0 Writing process alone

39

0 Writing process and Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning
a Library and computer or online research

0 Peer review

0 Conference and instructor

- Postmortem (reflective thoughts on module)

These analysis memos proved to be very helpful in staying close to or
grounded in the data. They also proved helpful in filtering out textual themes or
patterns in the data From the analysis memos a textual theme matrix was developed
to help identify similarities in the participants’ descriptions of each of the seven
categories. As a result of the memos and the matrix, the categories or axes were
eventually clearly defined, reduced in number, and became the patterns or themes that

are used in the following findings chapter.

40

Chapter Four
Findings

The purpose of this study was to describe the nature of the students’
experience in their second course or module of their adult studies program. The five
phases that have been identified as part of this experience will be discussed. Each
phase represents several different characterizations or traits of the experience as
described by the learners. These include emotional or affective responses, behaviors,
or issues associated with the Assessment of Private Learning. Further explanation or
understanding of each phase and its place in the overall experience is reserved for
Chapter Five.

This chapter first presents the five phases or themes or sets of activities of the
participants’ experience of writing Life Learning Papers. They include the following:
1) Moving into Module Two; 2) Accommodating the writer’s self-identity; 3)
Connecting the particular with the general; 4) Sharing stories; 5) Receiving trusted
feedback. The last part of the chapter presents the participants’ reflections,
interpretations, or meaning of this experience. This theme is called “Looking back at
the process of writing Life Learning Papers.” It represents two categories of learning
or change in the participants; namely, instrumental and expressive.

Moving into Module Two

0n the sixth week of their program, the students begin their second course or
module, Critical Analysis and Research Writing. According to the curriculum, that
night they are equected to come with their first critical synthesis paper (CSP), which

as previously noted, represents 60 percent of their grade for the first course, Adult

41

Development and Life Planning. They are also expected to have read the first week’s
materials for Module Two and to have completed the “applications” or written
exercises that accompany the reading. The applications actually are designed to
guide the students through the writing of their first CSP. They stand for a typical
writing process of six steps. The Module One instructor also plays a critical role by
relaying these expectations to the students in a timely and accurate manner and by
giving his or her own clear directions or expectations for the first critical synthesis
Paper-

The goal for the first night of Module Two, according to the curriculum, is to
review the six-step writing process and thus the students’ critical synthesis papers. At
the same time their second writing assignment, the life learning paper, is introduced.
In preparation for this assignment, both the admissions specialist and the academic
advisor have talked with each student about possible life experiences suitable for the
Assessment of Private Learning (APL) or the writing module.

Some students come into the program with enough credits to fulfill their
academic requirements without APL. Nevertheless, the talks between the students
and the academic advisor help them work out tentative academic profiles for the
completion of their bachelor’s degrees. Then before the start of Module Two, the
academic advisor assembles for each student a packet that includes his or her
tentative academic profile with several possible topic guidelines for their LLPs
attached. The guidelines for each topic have been developed by the appropriate
academic discipline and indicate the minimum requirements to earn both a specific

number and certain level (i.e., lower or upper) of credits. Sometimes the academic

42

advisor comes on the first night of Module Two to review this material with the
students. Other times he or she gives it to the instructor to explain to the students
how these guidelines fit into the process of writing their life learning papers.

Another objective for that evening, according to the curriculum, is to
introduce the procedure and privacy issue of sharing and reviewing each other’s
papers, not only the CSPs, but also the LLPs. The latter usually contain much more
personal information than the fornrer, thus sonre students may be reluctant to have
any one else read them, except instructors or trained evaluators for the Assessment of
Private Learning or English waivers.

So even through the first night’s schedule appears to be well planned, any trip
into an unknown territory can set off a sense of nervousness or fear in people, and
with the participants of this study, there was no exception. Moving into Module Two,
they reported strong feelings of either anxiety or confusion. Those feelings seemed
related mostly to their first paper (i.e., critical synthesis paper) that they had written in
the week between the end of Module One and the start of Module Two. According to
the participants, both the first instructor and the students had met the expectations of
the curriculum (i.e., clear directions had been given and the course materials had been
read).

Feeling Anxious

The participants’ recollections of their feelings on the first night of Module
Two were dominated by anxiety, nervousness, worry, and insecurity. Ariel recalled
that when she first came into the class, she remembered thinking that she had done

well on papers at a regional public university. But she “really didn’t have a direction

43

. . . in the thought process. . . . So I probably just kind of by accident or by luck or
maybe the instructor wasn’t even paying that much attention or giving me that much
feedback . . . .,” Ariel explained. “So that probably led me to, well, I must be doing
something okay, but I don’t really know what it is.”

Furthermore, because Ariel had received a poor evaluation of her sample
paper, which is part of the admission process, she was particularly worried about her
first CSP. “When I wrote . . . a sample writing . . . and my feedback on it was ‘you’re
[probably] going to need . . . tutoring’ and . . . ‘you’re writing is really bad’ and all
this stuff. And at that time I remember being really hurt over it and saying, oh, my
goodness, I didn’t know that I was that terrible because I had been writing papers at
[the regional public university] and had been getting As and Bs. So I thought . . . part
of me was like I didn’t believe them and I didn’t buy into it. But another part of me
was like, oh, goodness, what about that tutoring on top of all of this, and I’m really
way out there . . . .,” Ariel said.

Ariel was not alone in her feelings of being mostly lucky and completely at a
loss with her writing and achieving good grades on her papers at previous colleges
and universities that she had attended. About her first CSP, Faith said, “I have not a
clue whatlwasdoingwiththat paper. Iwas really lostwiththat paper.” Although
the Module One instructor had given the class members an outline of what she
wanted and what she expected, according to Faith, it was not enough to make her feel
secure in her writing ability. “I didn’t know about how to go out and then in [i.e.,
introduction] and then do your body and then go fi'om a narrow to a larger [i.e.,

conclusion] at the end of the paper,” Faith explained. “Even though I did okay on

that paper. . . I didn’t have that confidence. I think I felt lucky that I did it that way. It
just happened for me.”

The discussion about the writing process that first night apparently had little
or no effect on Faith’s feelings about or confidence in her writing ability. “I don’t
believe . . . that first night was that stressful. But by the time we left, I was like I have
no idea what I’m doing,” Faith said. “T hat was probably what I thought when I left,
oh, brother, I have no idea what I’m doing, oh, well.”

Jan also commented about the first night of Module Two that she was
“nervous about writing another paper and [having] a new instructor.” Cheri was
another participant who “remembered being nervous [the first night] because all of a
sudden it’s an English class.” “I was still nervous just fiom writing the first paper. It
wasn’t turned in yet, so I was still unsure of myself,” explained Cheri.

In sum, despite curricular and instructor support, some students moved from
Module One into Module Two with marked anxiety, nervousness, worry, and
insecurity as to whether they could meet the writing expectations or standards of the
college.

Being Confused

While some participants appeared anxious and insecure about the writing
assignments as they moved fi'orn Module One into Module Two, others seemed
unconcerned and confident about their writing ability. Yet they were confused about
the transition between the two modules in various ways.

Although Bobbi entered Module Two with no anxiety or concern about her

writing ability, she did expect to become a better writer along the way. She expected

45

“. . . to find out things that in [her] writing and in [her] paper that . . . maybe [she
was] not doing a good job in the structure of it as far as paragraph or sentence
structure.” Bobbi apparently missed the point about the distinction between the
critical synthesis papers and the life learning papers. “Yeah, I didn’t know that until
you [i.e., researcher] were telling me now because I was thinking why did I, you
know, have that whole module, that whole class, when I mean it made me less
confident in my writing,” she said. Bobbi believed that she had no need for credits
for prior learning. Yet, she said that she chose her topic (i.e., alcoholism) as a way to
research and prepare for a national assessment test, which , according to the
curriculum, she could have avoided by submitting her paper for assessment of prior
learning.

Like Bobbi, John embarked upon his journey through Module Two with
confidence in his writing ability. Yet he was also somewhat confused about the first
night. First, he remembered submitting his CSP that night. “The [CSP was] another
one ofthose areas where... there was confirsion about what had to be done and what
didn’t and when to do and who gets which copies, and there was one of those
moments, if I recall correctly,” John said, seeming to speak for his entire group. “The
part that [seemed] goofy about that [was] you’re checking it (i.e., CSP) for certain
things, although you’re not using the format (i.e., LLP) that you’re going to be
using.” In other words, most of his confirsion seemed to focus on the difference in
structure between the critical synthesis papers and the life learning papers. Whereas
the latter are organized around Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning, the former

have a traditional essay format.

46

John described his feelings that first night as “reasonably overwhelmed.” “I
think everybody’s heads were reeling. I mean we had just turned in our first paper, so
that was aheady traumatic enough, and then you’re starting this whole other boring
concept (i.e., LLP). It could have been a module on anything and probably [would
have] had almost the same impact. I think it’s so early on that almost everything is
new and different, so whether it was that [life learning paper] or . . . statistics, I think,
would have been equally traumatic probably,” John said, again securing to speak for
his cohort.

There is also some evidence of confusion about the role of the academic
advisor, the individual academic plan, and the topic guidelines for each of the life
learning papers. John was the only one who remembered meeting with the academic
advisor, as part of the registration process, and discussing possible life learning paper
topics. According to John, that conversation occurred about six weeks before the
start of Module Two. “[The academic advisor] gave us some [ideas] that she had. I
don’t even remember, but . . . I remember her writing where, you know, day one, way
back when you registered, she wrote down some of the ideas on things that you could
write about [based on how many and what kind of credits you needed to complete
your degree]. So, yeah, we got . . . those [topic guidelines] from her because that’s
where some of those ideas came from.” However, John made no mention of
receiving his academic profile with those topic guidelines or whether the academic
advisor came in person

Faith did remember that the instructor, not the academic advisor, passed out

the topic guidelines. But when she received them, she was uncertain. She had

47

brought her topic guidelines [marriage and family] to the research interview, along
with about 10 pages out of about 140 pages fi'om her Module Two curriculum. “So
that’s everything that I tore out [or kept] that I said, ‘Okay, I have to have these with
me when I’m writing the paper. We’ve got to find out what is important for us, don’t
we? But most importantly [those pages and that topic guidelines sheet] kind of gave
[me] the key, the point,” Faith explained. Although she could produce the topic
guidelines and those selected pages from the module materials, Faith, like John,
appeared to have no academic profile fiom the advisor.

Cheri was the only participant to mention her academic profile and that it had
been helpful in choosing the topic for her life learning paper (i.e., spiritual growth and
development). She also mentioned that she had “met [the academic advisor] a few
times.” Ariel and Jan never directly referred to the academic advisor.

In sum, all the participants moved into Module Two with feelings of either
anxiety or confusion about the two writing assignments for the first two modules.
They also experienced some confusion about the connection between academic
advising and the academic profiles and topic guidelines for the LLPs. Their issue was
whether their writing was good enough to make the grade, not only in the first
module, but also in the second, and stay in the game.

Accommodating Writer’s Self-Identity

As will be seen, one of the features of this study is the participants’ emotional
reaction to Module Two’s introduction of a distinctive way of organizing an academic
writing assignment. In order to fully describe this reaction, it is helpful to show first

the feelings and assumptions about writing that they brought to the module (i.e., their

48

initial writer’s identity). Then it will be shown how this identity was impacted by the
introduction of Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning as the structure for the life
learning papers. The description of the participants’ negotiation between their initial
identity as writers and their final mastery of Kolb’s Model into their writing process
is the theme of this phase of the study and will be referred to as accommodating the
writer’s self-identity.

Already anxious, insecure, or confirsed as they move into Module Two, the
learners were quickly confionted with another challenge; that is, incorporating an
unusual way of thinking about and writing a paper. This rare format is introduced to
the learners on the second night, according to the curriculum. Actually, during the
first week of Module Two, they are expected to read about it in the course materials,
as they complete the final draft of their critical synthesis paper and start work on the
thesis statement for their life learning paper. During the second night of class,
according to the curriculum, Kolb’s Model was reviewed and also the Learning Styles
Inventory, which is based on the model. All the students have taken this inventory at
the start of their program

The model was then presented as a way of structuring the life learning papers.
Many different visuals such as a graph, outline, descriptors, and a sample paper were
used to help the students understand that the model was intended more as the
structure of the life learning paper than a writing method. An in-class application
called “Once around the Circle” was also done to show the students how the modes of
model (i.e., concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract concept, and active

experimentation) are differentiated not only in firnction, but also in language. Yet as

49

will be shown in the following description of their encounter with this foreign
approach to organizing a paper, most of the study’s participants experience stress and
fi'ustration as they accommodate the mastery of Kolb’s Model into their initial
identity as writers.
Initial identity as writers
As noted above, the feelings and assumptions about writing that the learners
brought to the module defines “initial identity as writers.” The process of starting
and writing a thesis statement stressed and fi'ustrated some of the participants. For
example, the following is Faith’s vivid description of her “mental process” of trying
to develop a thesis statement.
First, I had to pick out what I was going to talk about, the small words--
religion, finances, and trust and communication. Those were my key words.
But then, taking those key words and putting them in [a thesis statement], I

had to have a lot of help from [the instructor]. And getting them in a format

that . . . went in the angle of what the paper wanted fi'om a sociological
viewpoint,lhadadifficulttimewiththe wording. . . . Sol...gotso
fi'ustrated with the thesis statement and having such a hard time with it, it just
made everything hard. It was a very hard paper to write. I mean, you could
seehowfi'ustrated-—thereispenciLthereisblackink,thereisblueink,and
there is red ink. That is how many times I had to go over this [guidelines
sheet] inmy mindandrelookatthisthingtotryand figureoutwhatlwas

doing.

She had brought her topic guidelines sheet to the research interview. Faith
also recalled that the instructor had directed the students “to have [the thesis
statement] tinned in and checked by the [academic advisor] by Week Three (this
procedure deviated Item the course curriculum). . . . It took me forever, and I kept
[going] to [the academic advisor] because I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Yet her academic advisor apparently mislead her about the sociological

perspective of her paper, and thus when she finally did meet with the instructor, Faith

50

had to start over. “Well, [the academic advisor] first told me that I could do what I
thought I was going to do, and then I had . . . [the entire first cycle at] . . . the first
meeting [tlnt] I had with [the instructor]. I had my whole thesis statement done up,
the first paragraph, introduction paragraph, and then I found out I was doing it
wrong,” Faith said.

Faith remembered the instructor had talked “a lot” about “prewriting,” a term
used in the course curriculum, and its various techniques such as free writing,
outlining, or self-interviewing that can be used to develop a tentative thesis statement
for any writing assignment. But she confessed that she did not “remember anything
he said about [it] because [her] prewriting [was] done in [her] head. . . . I prewrite in
my head. I don’t prewrite out on paper. But he said prewriting can be in your head, a
lot of people do that. Not everybody has to write things down on paper the first time
because some people . . . go over it at different times and different places and go, oh,
yeah, okay, that’s—then. I do this all the time. I’m like, oh, that’s something, yeah,
andlwanttoputthat inmypaper. I doalotofprewriting inmy head. Andthenwhen
I’mwriting, I goandsitdown. . . andtypeitout. . . . Butwhenl sitdownandtype,
what I’m typing is . . . just like my final copy. I’ve vested a lot [of time], I mean, I’m
thinking of each and everything . . . oh, it was hard. Maybe it’s just my style. My
style didn’t help any.” This was evident in the fact that she wrote very little for the
first four weeks of the course.

Like Faith, Bobbi’s writing style seemed to be very little help to her. She
described working on her computer at home as “very fi'ustrating . . .” Unlike Faith,

however, Bobbi appeared to have little recognition of the term “prewriting.” She

51

never did or could explain her method for developing a thesis statement. The closest
she came to an explanation was to say that with her first CSP and other previous
papers, they had “[flowed] really good when I [was] writing. . . . I was just writing. I
mean I just [would] write what’s coming into my head. But [the LLP] just couldn’t
flow for me; writing it was very difficult . . . . [I] had to stop and place it somewhere.
. . . I just didn’t feel like I had the instruction. . . to put [my experiences] in the
sections. I mean I was basically trying to look at the different models (e.g., an
oversimplified, bulleted sample of once-around-the-circle using Kolb’s Model) and
go, okay, I guess this is where this goes,” she said.

When pressed about methods of prewriting, Bobbi did recall that the instructor
had said something about “brainstorming.” But she could not remember “ever being
told that [they] . . . could just write [the paper] and then put it in Kolb’s [Model].”

In contrast to Faith and Bobbi, Jan, ArieL and Cheri had much less trouble
accommodating their initial writing style to the unusual challenges of the life learning
paper. Jan, in particular, had so little trouble with writing her life learning paper, she
seemed almost indifi‘erent. To her, it was just another writing assignment “that . . .
wasrealstructural. . . . lcan’t,Imean,youcouldputagunto myheadrightnow,
and I couldn’t tell you, but at the time I knew what [the instructor] expected, and I
had to write about the three [learning outcomes] and wlnt I had to write about, you
know, you title it out,” she said, apparently referring to APA style and the different
levels of headings that are used in the paper’s organization.

Ariel also had little trouble writing her life learning paper. In contrast to Jan,

she was much more enthusiastic about writing. “I love sitting down and doing that.

52

It’s enjoyable to me. The hard part, for me, is getting myself settled down to say,
‘OK, go do it.’ But once I get there, I don’t want to stop . . . ,” she said.

Ariel’s prewriting method was once again more mental than what is suggested
in the course for the writing process. “I [would have] thought about [the paper] in my
head for days and days before [I sit down at the computer], just kind of throwing
ideas around, probably brainstorming in my head; [then when I sit down at the
computer,] that’s when everything starts flowing for me. . . . And then [I] make . . .
changes throughout as I am going along. . . . I might see something that I need to put
somewhere else, so I move it there or whatever.”

Cheri admitted that time was a factor that pushed her into attempting to
structure her LLP into Kolb’s Model as soon as possible. Although her cohort had
extra weeks because of Christmas break, as a youth pastor it made no difference in
her writing process. “Most of the time the paper [was] half written in my head before
I [would] even get to the computer. So I usually [would] hardly go to actually writing
until I [would have] it formulated in my head first.”

So Cheri’s prewriting method was much like everyone else’s in the study.
However, Cheri did recall the Module Two instructor encouraging the students to
prewrite by “just telling their stories and not worrying about the structure of the
paper. . . . And I used [the instructor’s suggestion] to some extent, but even as I was
writing, it was like wait a minute, [and] I’d put a parenthesis around a paragraph or
something and I’d write ‘CE’ (i.e., concrete experience) next to it or something. So I
was aware of [the model] while I was writing that way; that [sentence or something]

needs to go there.”

53

John also had trouble with the format of the life learning papers. Yet he was
more inclined to believe that he was instructed to write or prewrite the papers in
Kolb’s Model. When asked what he remembered about his writing process for his
LLP, John responded with a question of his own, “You mean me actually writing it or
the way it was taught and how [I] went about writing it after that?” Told that either
response would be all right, John said, “I don’t know. I mean it just wasn’t the easiest
thing to do to learn to write in a different format, and I remember a lot of writing and
I’mjust not sure I’m hitting it and I know there were parts that I put in the wrong
places.”

As with all the other participants, John appeared to have undo the connection
that the LLPs had to be written from the start in the Kolb’s Model format. “Oh, yeah,
sure, sure. I grasp it better now, yeah I don’t know if it was clear as mud at the time;
it seems better to me now,” he said. “[The connection was made] because [the
instructor] said you had to write your papers using Kolb’s Model. I mean, it has four
parts to it, and you talk about an experience, you reflect on it, you sort of postulate a
theory, I guess, as far as abstract concepts, and then talk about how you implement
them. [The instructor] said that is the [experiential] learning process and that is the
model by which you will write your paper. Because if there was a way to do it
without Kolb's Model, I think we would have all been interested. But unless we were
missing something, it was quite obvious that was the way you [were] to write [those]
papers and I continue to write these papers.”

In sum, none of the participants, except perhaps Cheri, attempted to follow

the recommended writing process (i.e., prewriting techniques) as they were presented

54

in the first night of class. They all tended to rely on their own writing method or
style, which had been successful until they encountered the foreign construction or
fi‘amework for writing called “Kolb’s Model.” Then if they were able to
accommodate a new writer’s identity fairly quickly by incorporating the model’s
modes into their prewriting, they suffered less stress and frustration. Examples of this
successful accommodation were Ariel, Jan, and Cheri. Those who were less
successfill were Faith, Bobbi, and John. They experienced a great deal of stress and
fi'ustration as demonstrated in the next section.
Encounter with a foreign construction for learning to write

As noted above, the participants’ negotiation between their initial identity as
writers and their final mastery of Kolb’s Model into their writing process defines the
“encounter with a foreign construction for learning how to write.” Without exception
their struggle with the LLP’s format appears to be the most memorable and thus
defining element of the course. For instance, Ariel said that the class “studied and
learned about . . . people’s difi‘erent learning styles and how the dynamics of that can
work or works [in] people’s relationships.” Then she added that “Kolb’s Model . . .
made it a lot easier to write a paper.” She seemed to have missed the connection
between the Learning Styles Inventory and the theory upon which it is based; namely,
Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning. Yet, she appeared to have made a connection
between the model and the writing of life learning papers as defined at Covenant
College.

Furthermore, Ariel saw the LLP as “a great opportunity to prove not only to

[herself], but [also] to others . . . that [she had] gained some knowledge and learning

55

[ti-om her own experiences] . . . [the paper] wasn’t someone else’s [work], [and it
was worthy of college credit],” she concluded. “I really [liked] that because I do
believe that . . . there is so much that you can learn that you can apply to different
things, but not given credit for that. . . . You always have to look at someone else’s
experience, someone else’s work, or somebody else’s theories or ideas. [The life
learning paper] kind of gives you a chance to find your own [ideas]. It was a nice
feeling.”

Whereas Ariel felt good about her encounter with the model, Bobbi felt
otherwise. “I have a lot to say about Module Two. When you came in [to talk about
the study], it was like I didn’t care for it. I felt like I was very confident, a very good
writer, and . . . I had been doing classes at the community college, had done classes at
[regional public university]. I had always gotten A+s, As, great grades on my papers,
and I struggled with that type of wrrtmg It was awfuL” said Bobbi. “It was just
awful. I didn’t like it at all. I mean it made me less confident in my writing fi'om that
class, and I’m not sure of the benefit of it.” This lack of confidence, however,
seemed to be correlated to her less than expected grade of “B.” Whether she would
have felt differently about her writing and the module if she had received an “A,”
without first questioning the instructor’s calculations, was a question that was not
asked during the interviews. Nevertheless, the evidence does seem to show that
Bobbi had a great deal of difficulty accommodating Kolb’s Model into her writing
style, and moreover she confused the LLPs’ unique structure with that of the CSPs,
which resulted in fmther confusion for her in the following module and beyond. Like

John, Bobbi believed that she “had to write” her LLP (and subsequent CSPs) in

56

Kolb’s Model. “I was trying to write in that Kolb’s. Yeah, I’m using the examples,
and I’m trying to put it in the sections, and I was getting so frustrated because I
wasn’t just writing,” she said.

Faith was another example of a participant who thought of Kolb’s Model as a
model for learning how to write, instead of its intended purpose as a model for how
adults learn from experience. She was even more vocal than Bobbi about her
complaints. “I did not like it at all,” said Faith, referring to Kolb’s Model and
shuffling through her pages that she had brought to the interview. “Oh, here we are.
Here’s where these nasty little things are. The introduction, which was fairly easy, but
then we had to do the content (sic) experience, the reflective observation, abstract
concepts, and the active experimentation, which were so confusing. . . . And no
matter how many times I read this [sample paper] . . . when [I would] go to . . .
physically write down what [I was] thinking, it [was] very hard to do. . . .” Faith was
unable to renrember whether Kolb’s Model was introduced early or later in the
module. She continued to look through her papers and said, “Okay, here’s Kolb's
Model, right here—I pulled it out and carried it with me. And that was—I have a
paper on it. Yeah, ltore it out. I didn’t write a date on it... .”

0f the four modes of Kolb’s Model, Faith seemed to have the most trouble
understanding “reflective observation.” “I couldn’t tell you [what it means according
to Kolb]. I [would] have to read it, and I [would] have to read it, and I [would] have
to read it. Reflective observation is supposed to be reflecting back on your

experience. Okay, I can say that much, but that don’t mean nothing to me,” said Faith.

57

Like Faith, John had some difficulty with the “reflective observation” part of
the model. Unlike Faith, however, John was able to move through his initial
fi'ustration and accommodate a new way of drinking and writing much more quickly
than Faith. Using Kolb’s Model, he modified his writing process and described how
he methodically learned to reflect in each of his experiences:

Well, I guess, reflective observation is certainly first person, and the concrete

experience is what you did. But even reflective observation, I think, it’s a

whole warm, fuzzy section I dread. I hate it. I hate it. As a matter of fact, I

had written a concrete experience, and I . . . just stopped because I said, oh,

here’s tint, and I didn’t even know where to go then. Sol said, all right. I

typically try to write three paragraphs for each section, and it spaces out

about right, so it’s a page, page plus. So I look back, concrete experience,

what’s my first paragraph say? Okay, what does that mean to me, what did I

see in that first paragraph? Try to write another paragraph [of] reflective

observation. And that’s just the way I have to approach it, methodically.

Faith noted that her instructor had given the class a “cheat sheet” of words to
help them distinguish the different parts of Kolb’s Model. “Yeah, he did say we had
little—on my little purple area (pointing to another one of her hand-written
notations)—there are words that you’re supposed to use to [write each part of Kolb’s
Model] . . . I’ve got my words,” Faith said. For instance, for reflective observation,
the list of words included such phrases as “looking back,” “in retrospect,” and “upon
reflection.”

Faith also remembered that doing the “Once around the Circle” application in
class had been helpfill. “Yeah, we talked about Kolb's Model and had gotten in a
little bit of that funny [circle]. I understood that part! I thought this [Kolb’s Model]
was going to be a breeze [and] that it was going to be easy because I was looking at
this [once-around—the-circle sample upon which Bobbi also greatly depended] . . . it

looks so simple,” she said. “When we did . . . once around the circle, [the instructor]

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had each of us . . . write something small, and then we took a couple of them and put
them on the board and talked about them and said, ‘Okay, that really doesn’t belong
there,’” she said.

As noted Cheri also referred to Kolb’s Model as “frustrating,” but far less so
than Bobbi or Faith or John. “As a matter of fact the more it was pounded in my
head, the more I actually got it,” Cheri said. “It wasn’t something that I picked up
[and said], okay, I’ve read it; I’ve seen it, and I picked it up. It took time. I had to
work with it.” As with so many of the other participants, she had the most “difficulty
trying to get everything into the boxes.” For her, “just everything runs together.” Yet
Cheri was able to incorporate the model “pretty quickly” into her writing process.
“[Asl]was. . . writingandknewthatlwaswritingunderthis [block] . . .Iwentback
and read it. I was like wait a nrinute, let’s move this to that,” she explained.

Her ability to hear and differentiate the modes of Kolb’s Model came
throughout the writing of her life learning paper, according to Cheri. For instance,
although she needed a little prompting to remember doing the “Once around the
Circle” application in class, Cheri found that exercise helpful in understanding how
themodelwasusedasthestructureofthe LLP. Ontheotherhand, Cheriadmitted
that she had “trouble [with not only the structure, but also with the content,] figuring
out how much of [herself] to share . . . [because she did not] always like sharing [her]
past [incarceration].”

John never called the model fi'ustrating. He did, however, refer to it as
“boring.” “To me, youjust have to take out all the personality . . . . That’s the way,

you know, [the instructor] was looking for it because he is teaching the module and

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that’s what I’ve done and I’ve done well. So that, to me, says that’s what they’re
looking for. . . . To me that’s what is different [about the life learning papers] . . . I
compartmentalize these parts. Yeah, they all flow together, and they are all part of a
paper, but I very much have to compartmentalize them to do this kind of stuff. I think
it’s . . . just an unnatural way to present the information. I add in like useless tidbits or
phrases tint I can’t put them in there. I have had to take out all the really goofy stuff
that, to me, is what gives a paper personality. . .”

Jan also felt that the structure of the life learning paper obstructed her voice or
style. Compared to the other five participants, Jan had few clear memories of the
model or the LLP assignment. Yet, she recalled the sample paper. Jan believed that
the writer had not expressed her honest feelings, and she also at times had been held
back by the instructor from expressing her true humor. “Yeah, yeah, because I think .
. . like I would put in . . . a little bit of slang and [the instructor] would say, ‘Don’t use
that.’ But that’s the way that I was feeling at the time, you know, just kind of
kidding, humor stuff in it. And, of course, he doesn’t know me—he didn’t know me
tint well either. That’s just me. I just try to see the lighter side of things. It’s much
better to laugh than cry, you know, even if it’s in these little papers,” she said.

Yet she described Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning as “just a very
formatted style of writing” and admitted that “. . . it kind of helped [her as] a novice
atwriting. . . . Iknewwhat [the instructor] wantedandljust filledintheblanksof
it.” Her approach to writing her LLP sounded remarkably like John’s. Like John,
who proposed that “concrete experience” and reflective observation” should be

combined, Jan also stated that two of the sections could be combined, but she was

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uncertain which two. “Yeah . . . your concrete experience and your abstract, I think,
it was. I didn’t really care for it. I think it was the active experimentation. Mm,
11mm. Wait a minute. What’s the one before it? Abstract concept? Reflective
observation? I think that and the active experimentation could have been combined
more,” Jan said.

John, however, was quite clear about which sections he would combine or
ratirer which section he would eliminate in what he called “John’s Model”; namely,
reflective observation. “To me, that’s the way the story flows, whatever the example
is,” John stated. “That’s the whole major thinking versus feeling [issue]. . . . Those
feelings are irrelevant to me. It’s what is behind them and why you had them that are
relevant. I realize that we all have emotions and that’s fine, but that’s just how I think.
Idon’tcareiffl] hadachancetothinkback,andlwassadorwhatever. It’stheDr.
Laura strategy; the feelings don’t matter. I don’t mean that in a cold way. I have
[feelings] as much as the next guy, but it isn’t . . .”

Pressed by the point that writing itself was a reflective process, John said,
“Sure, anytime you are writing something down, you’re thinking about it. It’s just the
way. in which we have to present it, to me, seems contrary to the way that I would do
it . . . because I know a lot of [the instructor’s] comments, when we did go over my
paper,werejustthingsthat1wassayinginthewrongpartofthepaper.Ididmore
cutting and pasting than I had ever done [before on any other paper].”

In contrast to all the other participants, Ariel was the only one who actually
found Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning helpful in her writing process. “I

remember there were three or four different categories. I can’t say as if I could recite

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them all right now. I do remember I liked it because it gave [me] a fornnt to follow,
and [I] knew what direction [I was] going with [my] paper and [my] writing,” Ariel
said. “I saw some people struggling with [the model] in class, and I didn’t feel I had
a whole lot of struggle with [it]. I think maybe part of it was because, in a way, that
was how I always approached things in my life and thought of [them]. I have always
[gone] to books and such to get research and to learn about things and issues that
came up. Then I always [thought] through the thing, OK, there is something here I’m
supposed to learn, lessons of life or whatever, so I need to pay attention while I’m
going through it and get those [lessons], and in the end I’ll know what they are.
Sometimes I realize I’m not going to know until it’s all done and said, and I can look
[back] through the whole thing. So those lessons are something I will naturally be
able to apply.”

When asked to clarify how Kolb’s Model made it easier to write a paper,
especially when most students found that it only fi'ustrated their writing process, Ariel
explained, “Because, forme, . . . itwasapatternand itwaskindofhandedto youto
follow and so it helps you to . . . put your thoughts . . . where [they] belong in this
pattern, and so everything kind of fits together like a puzzle. [Kolb’s Model is the]
pattern [or] the puzzle without the pieces and then [you are] able to put [the pieces of
your life experiences] in where they belong. . . . If I were to write a paper without the
Kolb’s Model, I would have been totally lost. It would have been like chaos in my
mind, I guess, because I . . . wouldn’t have had that pattern. I wouldn’t have known
where to start, how to put it together, you know, how to have a beginning and an end,
[and a] middle.”

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In sum, nrost participants were unable to accommodate quickly a writing
method or style that incorporated the Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning into the
structure of her life learning paper. They experienced various levels of stress or
frustration, with the focus on the issue of how to accommodate a foreign model for
learning to write into their initial writer’s identity.

In the end they were all able to master the model well enough to write about
their life experiences and to organize them according to this unusual construction.
This mastery came, as Cheri pointed out, with time and effort at home or wherever
the students happened to be working on their papers. But it also came as the students
interacted together in the classroom or individually with the instructor.

Connecting the Particular to the General

The participants reported tint their least favorite or helme phase of the course
was “library night.” According to the curriculum, either a local community college
library or an in-class presentation about online research techniques should be
scheduled for the third week. Improving the learners’ research skills is one objective
for this night. But the goal for them is to begin finding scholarly literature that will
connect or support their particular, personal “concrete experiences” to the general,
public, or “abstract concepts” or principles represented in their personal experiences.
For instance, John, who was the only participant to write about his professional
experience, stated in his thesis statement that from 15 years of sales experience, he
had learned to be successful by communicating with honesty and integrity. Then
after demonstrating tint he did indeed have those traits (concrete experience) and

explaining what they meant to him (reflective observation), John again stated his

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learning outcome or principle of a successful salesperson; that is, honest, reliable
communication is necessary for a successful sales career (abstract concept). At that
point, John or any other student who is writing a life learning paper, shifts gears and
no longer speaks fiom his or her own personal experience. In this mode, the students
write as they would ahnost any other academic writing assignment. They define their
terms, explain why the information is important, and then state how the principle
might be practiced by anyone. Here the students rely on appropriate, credible
research to answer and support their responses to these questions. Then in the last
mode (active experimentation) of the “circle,” they return to their personal experience
and state how they have applied the abstract concept both directly and indirectly. For
instance, John talked about how, despite temptations in a competitive sales field, he
continued to hold the standards of honesty and integrity in his communication not
only in his workplace, but also in his home. John went through all four of these
modes or sections of the “circle” for each of the three aspects or learning outcomes of
his thesis statement.

Some peer review of the students’ first “circle” is also part of that night’s
agenda, according to the curriculum Yet, only Cheri had a vague recollection of
sonre sharing that occurred at the library. “There was a couple of times that we did
it—for my life learning paper? When we did the actual . . . [library research], on the
very end . . . I believe it was just three of us sitting next to each other,” she said.

Although much less scholarly literature is required for these unusual research
papers, compared to traditional ones, according to the curriculum, it still plays a

crucial role in supporting the student’s case that he or she does indeed have the prior

knowledge and skill in an academic field or disciple to earn college credits. It also
grounds the learners’ experience in a particular discourse or discipline such as
sociology or psychology. Yet of the two groups represented by the study’s
participants, only one group seemed to have gone to a local community college. The
other group members remembered receiving some kind of hand out that the instructor
provided on keyword research. Thus this discussion will be divided into two
categories—curriculum—driven and self-directed research.

Curriculum-driven research

As noted above, according to the curriculum, either a local community college
library or an in-class presentation about online research techniques should be
scheduled for the third week. This is the definition of “curriculum-driven research.”
Of the three participants who went to the library, Bobbi expressed the typical
response to whether her library or online research skills improved as a result of the
course, “No, the library stufi I had there, I had already had at the [regional public
university], so, I mean, it was duplicating that for me.” She added that her research
was on “alcoholism and codependency” and it had been “well done.”

Cheriwentso farasto saythatthispartofthecoursewasthe least helpful
aspect. “I’ve already got decent computer skills,” she said. “I yell at the computer a
lot, but I have decent computer skills.” She added that she remembered the instructor
had given a presentation on library research techniques “for over an hour or at least
an hour” that night and that because the community college library closed at 9 pm,
the class was there for only three hours. She also remembered that alter the

presentation, “the first computer [that she had] sat down at . . . didn’t work. . . . So I

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moved back to another one. I ended up sitting all by myself, and I remember I
couldn’t get into a web site that I really wanted to get into. And I didn’t really find
anything tint I was looking for, but I did go ahead and . . . e-nniled [it to] myself . . .”

Ariel affirmed what Cheri had said about that night. She also reported that
she had gained no confidence or skill in online research. “I don’t feel that I’m real
confident at the computer [research]. . . . I don’t know exactly what’s what on it yet
because I have not had the time, especially going to this class and I was kind of
thrown into it. The beginning of this class was the first time I sat down with my
computer really and started using it. So I haven’t been afforded a whole lot of time
without interruptions to learn what my [new] computer is capable of. . . . My main
objective with the computer is to type . . . my papers out,” she explained.
Self-directed Research

“Self-directed research” is defined as the techniques that the learners used,
other than the curriculum-driven method, to find the body of literature that connected
to and supported their particular prior knowledge, as presented in their life learning
papers. These methods included using their home or office libraries or going to a
local public library on their own time. The evidence showed that the participants
favored these methods of research.

There seemed to be two reasons for the limited use of the curriculum-driven
research component of the cornea One, as noted, was that only half of the
participants actually went to a research library. The other half apparently only
received an information sheet on keyword searches. Second, most of the participants

already owned most, if not, all the resources that they referenced in their life learning

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papers. For instance, because of a self-help class on personal growth that she had
taken in her neighborhood, Ariel had already purchased all the books that she used as
references for her LLP. “Like for my LLP, I had most of my references. I sat down
at home first and went through all the books I have there, and most of my resources
were there already” she said.

Cheri, John, and Jan also reported that they already had all their references in
their personal libraries. “1 think I bought one extra book and then didn’t use it. . . . I
had already taught a lesson to my teens about a year ago on prayer, and so I knew
quite a bit right there. It was just finding wint I wanted” Cheri said.

“My [LLP] was on sales, so I had all the books I needed. I didn’t need to . . .
use the online resources” John said. He also remembered receiving a hand out from
the instructor on “how to find stuff. But because [he] had the books and a fear of the
Internet and how that whole thing worked, [he] just worked with what [he] had and
[that] was fine.”

“I did it on having a child. So the fertility part at first when I was trying to get
pregnant, I read every book there was” Jan said. For her second learning outcome on
having a child at an older age, however, Jan said that she had not done any prior
research. “No, because I never thought I could get pregnant in my second marriage,
so I never researched it” she explained. For those additional references Jan recalled
using a combination of modern and “old-fashioned” library research. “Some
[references] I got ofl‘ the Internet, but mostly I got books out of the library” she said.

“And [the instructor] did go over a little bit on the Internet stuff and things like that . .

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. to help you do the research part, but there wasn’t anything more that [the instructor]
could have done for us.”

Faith, however, had no memory of library research as a class activity. “I don’t
remember! That’s why I am so confused, I mean, I don’t think we followed [the
module]. I think . . . the way we had classes was pretty abstract and not [really]
forrrntted, as far as like what we were actually supposed to be doing” she said.
“That’s where I was stressing, stressing, stressing!”

During the entire course Faith insisted that library research techniques were
mentioned only briefly. “You know. . . just maybe 10 or 15 minutes [they were]
talked about. Maybe by this level, they expect you to have some [knowledge], but I
don’t have any” she said. “He gave us that [hand out on key word searches] and said
this [was] a real good outline and how you can go get information.” Yet Faith
admitted tint at that time she set the piece of paper aside and never thought about it
again until she was having trouble with her literature review for her independent
student project (ISP).

Like Cheri, Faith thought that even a 10 minute presentation about library
research was a waste of time. “I was like why are we doing all of this? Don’t waste
my time because we weren’t doing a whole lot of research for this paper. Just one
little section of each thing--you get little blurbs, you know, I’ve got to use the Bible
for one, and I don’t know what I used now. But, you know, getting a few books was
easy. Getting 15 [for the independent student project] is a whole different story” she

said.

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Nevertheless, on her own at some point during this phase, Faith went to a
library to find books as references for her LLP. “[The reference librarian didn’t help
me]. I didn’t know that you could do that I didn’t know there was somebody that
would do tint for you or help you do that. I got on their little computer thing tint . . .
you just type in the main word and the subject, and then stuff came up.
Communication was one word tint I used, and there was lots of stuff on that. But then
I had to narrow that down to trust and communication and marriage. Yeah, I kind of
used those points in my thesis statement because I couldn’t find books that were
related to the topics. . . . It took me like two hours. There’s so much information”
Faith explained.

Jan was the only participant to offer the theory that during this phase the
library night was required only as a way to practice either their research or typing
skills, not as a way to support or generalize their personal learning or positions as
demonstrated in their papers. “It gives you more experience in researching. . . . I
mean, you should be able to back up some of the things; . . . you’re learning more
fi'om [writing the paper] when you do research. You’re reading other people—well,
see, I guess it’s what you’re doing it on,” she concluded. “Well, I guess, every paper,
I get to be a faster [typist]. But, I mean, I don’t think I’m going to get to 120 words a
minute. I’m probably 50 words a minute.”

Insum, thisphase ofthe coursewasthe least wellreceived. At best it is
apparent that most of the participants were either already confident or too consumed
with the writing of their LLP to be concerned about their computer and research

skills. About the best that my be said about the night is it appears not to add to their

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anxiety, confusion, stress, or fi'ustration with the writing assignment. Moreover, most
of the participants had appropriate, credible references in their own personal libraries.
And if they needed to find scholarly literature, as in the case of Faith or Jan, they used
the “old-fashion” method of going to the local library, as opposed to going to the
Internet at home.

Sharing Stories

As noted, on the first night of Module Two, according to the curriculum, the
idea and practice of peer review is introduced. Then, throughout the course the
students are given opportunities to share and discuss their work and more importantly
their understanding of the integration of Kolb’s Model into their writing process.

The fourth night, in particular, according to the curriculum, is set aside for this
activity. Divided into small groups, usually less than five, the students are instructed
to read their papers out loud to each other. In this way they are encouraged to listen
for the content or language in each of the model’s four modes and not focus on the
technical or mechanical aspects of the writing such as grammar or punctuation errors.
In both the faculty guidelines and the student materials, there are written directions
and various checklists that may also be used for peer review. The checklists take the
students through the outline or parts of the paper such as introduction, thesis
statement, transition, or concrete experience. For each of these elements, there are
questions for the students to answer. For instance, one of the questions for a concrete
experience is, Are facts presented tint occurred only at the time of the experience?
Furthermore, the instructors may move from group to group and participate in the

peer review.

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Of course, while the students are focused on whether they are successfully
adapting the model into their writing style, they are also sharing their personal or
private life stories and the lessons that they learned from them. For instance, Ariel’s
life learning paper was about her three divorces. And Cheri, although some would
consider her topic personal enough—spiritual growth and prayer—also talked about
what sparked her closer relationship with God; namely, her military incarceration.
Because these stories often reveal painfirl, vulnerable periods in the students’ lives,
they are sometimes reluctant to share them. But when they do, especially early in
their program, the students often find that they have a lot in common and thus begin
to build community, moving from a group of people who just happened to end up in
the same room at the same time for a number of weeks to a cohort of students who
care and support each other. As they start to recognize their individual difl‘erences,
strengths, and weaknesses, the group begins to work together in more effective ways.

What is clear from the evidence, however, is that not every learner “trusts” or
places much value on his or her peer’s suggestions or remarks about his or her LLP.
Thus the exercise may be somewhat affirming and confidence-building and helpful in
moving their writing process along, but as far as assuring the learners that they have
definitely and definitively used not only the model, but also the English language and
APA style in the proper way, the only affirmation that these learners trusted came
from one source, that is, the instructor. In their minds, the instructor was the only
“expert” and “authority” and had the final word on what was right or wrong in their
life learning papers. The following discussion is divided among these two apparent

perceptions of peer review; that is, its “perceived value” and its “perceived

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limitation.” Along with their perceptions, the students’ description of the peer review
process will also be included.
Perceived Value of Sharing Stories

The perceived value of sharing stories was twofold: It brought the group
members closer together; and it contributed slightly to their confidence as they
accommodated Kolb’s Model into their writing process. Bobbi and Cheri, in
particular, found peer review to be important or valuable. Bobbi, who all along had
nothing good to say about the writing course and was the most confused about its
purpose and value was the first to point out the perceived value of sharing stories.
“Everybody who read mine was like I just don’t know what you could change. It’s
reallygood. . . . I seemedto beone ofthe ones grasping [the idea] becausetheother
ones . . . just couldn’t get it. They just couldn’t get it, and I was just giving them
suggestions and things they could do. I remember doing that,” she said. “Yeah, I
think, itreallydid [bringustogether].Ithink . . .justto learnmore abouteachother.
. . the personal stufi‘ that you don’t just meet somebody and start sharing. That people
writing about real sensitive things, hmm, I can’t think of it, I really . . . can’t think of
the word that I want.”

But while she was trying to retrieve that word from her memory, Bobbi must
have thought again about the rest of her experience in the course. “[My] least favorite
class so far that I’ve had is definitely the Module Two,” she concluded.

Nevertheless, Cheri also had good memories about peer review. She found it
to be very helpful, encouraging, and “comfortable,” especially after the first time. It

gave her the confidence to go ahead and be more self-disclosing. “When they shared

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their topics it—especially one of the women who I was more nervous [about] sharing
my past with because some people, when they hear my past, they automtically . . .
look down on me. And this one woman happened to be a [former] state trooper (i.e.,
Bobbi) . . . and so I was nervous about that, but she shared her past first. And so really
that helped me and it was like, okay, you know what? I can go ahead and put myself
in this paper because they heard it and they said you need more of you in there,
meaning more personal. And so once I heard their reflections, and it was like I felt
comfortable doing it then,” she explained.

Ariel also described her experience as affirming and building her confidence
in her writing ability. “I had very positive remarks from two other students. They
seemed to be really impressed with the way that I wrote. It made me feel good. For
me that class was really positive. It left me feeling good about myself and confident
in doing research writing,” she explained.

Perceived Limitation of Sharing Stories

Yet, more participants questioned the value of sharing stories than embraced
it. Their skepticism was focused on the issue of trust and whether the students were
capable of giving each other valuable feedback. They also questioned whether
greater group cohesiveness had actually occurred in Module Two. For instance,
Ariel said, “I don’t know if we shared enough to do that [in Module Two]. One of
my thoughts or a question I have, I wonder if that helped to open the door, like you
(i.e., researcher) just asked, because I don’t know. I do notice as time goes on, but
that could be time or something else, people come out with more and more stufl‘ and

open up a little more. It could have come out as a result of writing our papers, but

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we didn’t really share them a whole lot. I can only think of one time in particular,
maybe twice, we shared what we had written . . . [and] it was pretty much in the
beginning of [the module] . . . so people had not gotten too far on their papers . . . .”
Ariel said.

Jan felt very much the same way about peer review as Ariel. First of all, she
remembered doing peer review only “a little bit when [they] were starting . . . to get
[the] . . . thesis statement [for the life learning paper]. . . . But I don’t really think
they help all that much because people are worried more about their own paper and
you’re really not going to learn fi'om [them] . . . I mean, it helps, but not a lot. . . .
[They] can’t take on one more thing, and [they are] not instructors or have that
knowledge in writing, especially Module Two, to be able to critique. I mean, I can’t
take care of myself. . . . I mean, even listening, you try to . . . be helpful. But I don’t
feel comfortable giving people advice about . . . what their style [is] or what they’re
doing. I mean, somethings. . .jumpoutatyou. Youhaveto have . . . some ofthe
research stuff and . . . some obvious things or their thesis statement was totally
[unclear].”

Like Jan, John described the experience as “difficult.” He compared it to
“asking someone to cbck your geometry homework if you don’t necessarily
understandgeometryyet. . . . Andthatwastheonlypartthatlfeltwashardbecausel
had a different understanding of [the paper] than other kids (i.e., learners) and maybe
they had ind [a] reasonable response back from [the instructor] that they were headed
in the right direction, but I would have [written] it differently. So to me that was just

my opinion at that point. I don’t know that it was a [inforrmd] Opinion.”

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Faith appeared to be quite distrustful and suspicious of peer review. For
example, John recalled that Faith and he had read each other’s papers. “I thought she
was closer than [she] thought she was,” John said. “I think I read hers because a
person that was supposed to [read it] wasn’t married. She didn’t think that he was
going to even grasp what she wrote, so I think it made more sense for me to look at it.
I think she read mine, and it seemed like some light bulbs came on [for her], although
I didn’t feel like I had a great grasp [of the model], and I didn’t think hers seemed off
based. So I think we both felt we were headed in a good direction.”

Faith, however, never mentioned this exchange. She seemed to place her
confidence only in what the instructor had to say about her paper. “It’s [his] job to
read it. [Instructors] know what [they’re] reading and [they] know if [the students] get
what [they’re] supposed to be getting, . . . but when it comes to your peers that are
sitting at the table with you and they’re working for the same grade you’re working
forandthey’rewritingthesamekindofpaperyou’re writing, italso hasthesame
content, then that’s a little different because then you’re thinking, you know, I don’t
know what I’m doing. I don’t want anybody reading this. They’ll look at this and go,
man, is she stupid or what? Where did she come up with this?” said Faith.

In sum, some participants found comfort and encouragement in sharing their
stories. It seemd to give them the confidence and courage to proceed with their
accommodation of integrating Kolb’s Model into their individual writing styles.
Others felt that the self-disclosure brought the group members closer together, but
were uncertainty whether that kind of community building had begun in Module

Two.

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Yet there was no doubt that most participants did not trust or value peer
review. Thus although none appeared to be surprised by or pressured in sharing their
stories, most students did not report any increased cohesiveness in their cohorts as a
result of this exchange. The issue here was one of mistrust. Faith and Jan, in
particular, secured to treat the activity more as competition than collaboration among
peers.

Receiving “Trusted” Feedback

Sharing stories seemed to offer some comfort and encouragement for the
learners as they mastered the unusual writing assignment in Module Two. But for
most participants an encounter with a higher “authority” seemed to be necessary for
them to feel relief from the anxiety, confirsion, stress, and frustration that had
developed from their encounter with Kolb’s Model. These meetings, formally called
one—on-one conferences, according to the curriculum, occur in the fifth and sixth
weeks and are scheduled in place of class time. They take between 60 and 90
minutes for each learner. Whether a conference is scheduled the second week is
optional. Usually by that time the learner has a complete drafi ofthe life learning
paper (about 25 pages) and may be working with the instructor through email
attachments. Whether face-to-face or computer-to-computer, during this two-week
period, the instructor is giving the learners feedback about revising and editing their
writing assignment. The goal, according to the curriculum, is to submit the LIPS in
final form to the academic advisor on academic planning night, which is officime

Week 11 ofthe program.

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Each learner may submit up to three copies of the same paper, according to
the curriculum. One copy goes to the Module Two instructor and earns 2 credits.
Another copy may go to the English Department for a possible English waiver. If
granted, the learner would be relinquished from taking a second semester of first-year
English, so that is equivalent to 3 credits. The third copy goes to the Assessment of
Private Learning and may earn up to 4 credits. However, learners usually request or
“petition” for 2 or 3 credits for their prior learning.

On academic planning night, according to the curriculum, the academic
advisor also reviews the learners’ “unofficial” academic profiles. Together they
determine how many more credits the learners need to graduate on time with their
cohorts and how they could accomplish that goal. For instance, John discovered the
night of his academic planning that if he wanted to graduate with his group and not
take any other com outside of the required ones, he would have to write six more
life learning papers. His other options might have been to take week-end courses or
national equivalency tests such as DANTE and CLEP.

That night, according to the curriculum, once the learners decide how they are
going to complete their program and their academic profiles are updated and signed,
these documents become “oflicial” contracts between the learners and the college.
Nevertheless, at that point the learners do not know whether their waivers or petitions
will be granted. Still by then most have received positive, trusted fwdback from the
Module Two instructor and are finally feeling relief and affirmation about the writing

of their life learning papers.

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Bobbi “felt pretty good” about her conference with her instructor. “Well,
yeah, she met with me right before the final paper was due, and we went over what
changes needed to be made.” Like Bobbi, Cheri reported a similar experience with
the instructor. Cheri had e-mailed her paper ahead of time. But it had some kind of
spacing problem in the copy. Besides that technical problem, the only other feedback
that Cheri received from the instructor was “. . . a couple of mechanical things [that
she] had to fix . . . one or two areas where [she] had to go into more detail concerning
[her] experiences. . . .”

Ariel’s report of her conference with the instructor was about the same as
Bobbi’s and Cheri’s. Yet for her the meeting was a highlight of the course. “I was
really looking forward to [the conference], for one thing, because I was open to the
critique on my paper. It went well. I was really proud of the fact that there was not a
whole lot of work that needed to be done on my paper . . . just some [little] things
here and there. I found [the conference] to be very helpful. I was looking forward to
that [feedback] because I wanted [the instructor] to sit down and tell me what I was
doing right and wrong and give me some constructive criticism on [my paper],” she
said. I looked forward to that [meeting with her] immensely because I love that kind
of thing. I just soaked that up because I liked the feedback. I like to know where I
stand and what I’m doing.”

Jan also felt that the most valuable part of the course was the conference with
the instructor. “What really helps . . . when we had the one on one, and we wrote the

third section and he critiqued everything—where we were right, where we were

78

wrong . . . that’s what helped me out 100 percent,” she explained. “It was worth my
time coming in

. . . Hewasprepared. Hehad...the thingsthatwehadto correct andhowwecould
change our word things different (sic).

“What really affected me more [than anything else in the course] was sitting
with [the instructor] and getting the one-on-one and having him help [me] like that . .
. because [I] can get comments [from other instructors] and [sometimes I] can’t even
read what they’ve written. . . . If [the instructor] is sitting there with you, it helps a
lot. [I]readeachsentenceand. . . withgrammar...andcommas...allofyour
typical stuff. You still make mistakes on that at times . . .” Jan concluded.

John also remembered that his paper “wasn’t too bad . . . [and the conference]
was fine. [The instructor] read [the paper] back out loud and that seemed like a good
way . . . Yeah, I mean, he was like, okay, this really belongs over here. He didn’t say,
man, you screwed up; this doesn’t go here. He was always very supportive; to the
extent that the paper was all wrong, he made it seem as positive as possible. There
was one [cycle] I remember all these brackets, you know, ‘R0’ or ‘AC’, and it was
always inthewrong section, so I dida lotofcuttingandpasting, andIdidstartto get
a better understanding of it at that point.”

And then there was Faith, who, because of a particularly stressful and
frustrating start, had only part of her paper done by the time of her conference. “By
Week Five (i.e., Week Ten of the program) . . . three learning outcomes, I may have
bad part of them,” Faith said. “But I didn’t have everything done. [The instructor]

knew that I was struggling. But, of course . . . everybody [else] is turning in the right

79

thingandhaddone itthe [right] way,andIhadto go backandstartallover from
scratch. . . .”

In sum, the evidence supports the fact that this theme or phase of receiving
trusted feedback from the instructor was the most significant in terms of relieving the
anxiety, stress, and frustration of the students, as they negotiated their way toward
mastery of Kolb’s Model in their writing styles. During this two-week period the
learners received feedback that they trusted fiom the instructor. So the issue was one
of trust. All the study’s participants confirmed this finding. For a summary of these
findings, see Appendix F.

Looking back at the Process of Writing Life Learning Papers

The first part of Chapter Four described the five phases or themes of the
writing module experience for Covenant College adult studies students, focusing on
the affective or emotional, behavioral, and problematic aspects of each one. The last
part of the chapter addresses the participants’ reflections, interpretations, or meaning
of this process. Running throughout these reflections is the notion of learning or
change, particularly in the learners’ self-perceptions, which can be characterized in
two ways, that is, instrumental or technical and expressive or affective.

The learners’ instrumental learning or change is manifested in their attitude
about or confidence in their academic writing, as a result of the learning-to-write
experience. The participants described a range of change in their perceptions of their
ability to write academically fi'om positive to negative.

The second category represents expressive learning or change in the learner’s

perception of self. It is more a consequence of learning fiom prior learning than from

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learning to write. The learners described the manifestations of this form of change
from very little new learning to deep and profound learning about selfand its
relationship to others.

The purpose of this part of Chapter Four then is to describe richly and robustly
the nature of the learners’ reflections, understanding, or meaning of their experience
in the writing module, which will be organized according to two categories of
learning or change in self-perception; namely, instrumental and expressive.

Students ’ Perceptions of Instrumental Learning or Change

Although varying in degree, as a result of Module Two, most participants
reported a positive change in their attitude about or confidence in their ability to
write academically and thus to complete successfully the Adult Studies Program.
Ariel was quite excited about the writing of the life learning paper and thus seemed to
exemplify the most instrumental learning or change. She concluded, “You are better
equipped, self assured. I try explaining to people about [the paper], but some things
arekindofhardwhensomebodyisnottheretobeinthe midst ofitthemselves orsee
it. But I remember being excited about it around people, you know, what I was doing
at the time, what we were learning, and so whether they understood it, I don’t know.”

Cheri also seemed to gain more confidence in her writing ability as a result of
writing her Life Learning Paper (LLP). She noted that she no longer “dread[ed]” to
write papers. “[Writing the life learning paper] really kicked off what we needed for
writing allofourotherpapers. I meanwithoutthat [paper]. . .there were somany
things that I couldn’t remember about grammar; writing my first paper, I was like

now wait a minute. . . . [The life learning paper] definitely improved my writing [by]

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refreshing what I had long ago buried. In the Marine Corp you don’t need language
very much.”

John was another example of a student who gained confidence fiom writing
not only one, but seven life learning papers. “I feel more comfortable with my
writing skills now and know that I have the materials . . . on hand to look back,” he
said. “I’m more careful with my punctuation. [And] I make sure that I take some time
to read it . . . out loud to myself and [follow] the punctuation and everything and
that’s helped me. I’m realizing wait a minute, that doesn’t make sense.”

Faith, like John, said that writing the life learning paper had taught her “how
thingsshouldbewritten. ..withgreatdetail. . . .” Yetsheadmittedthatshehad
gained only a little confidence in her writing ability and her attitude about writing had
changed very little. “[Module Two was] a whole writing class. This [was] what it
was. So I still think I’m a lousy writer, regardless of what anybody else thinks. It’s a
self-perspective that I have and maybe I need to think that way to be able to do as
well as I do. Maybe if a person gets over self-confident, [she] doesn’t write as well. I
don’t have any idea. I still . . . don’t have confidence in my writing, and I don’t let
anybody read it. I don’t want anybody reading it, but the instructor.” Yet, Faith
confessed that if other students now asked to read her papers, she reluctantly allowed
them to do so.

Jan felt much the same as Faith. She reported that only because she received
an “A-” as a final grade in the module was she somewhat more confident as a writer.
Yet, her greater confidence had no efi‘ect on her attitude about writing. “I don’t like

to write. No. I hate to write. . . . I’m not that good at all. No, it’s not my favorite

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thing to do.” Nevertheless, Jan conceded that writing the life learning paper had
“helped [her] write [her] other papers. “I think anytime that you write anything, the
next time you write, it should be a little bit better. And, of course, that’s your second
time, your second paper, hopefirlly, [it does] get better” she concluded.

On the other hand, Bobbi, as has been well documented, was an example of a
student who experienced a negative effect in her attitude and confidence about her
writing ability. “[Module Two] didn’t help me in anyway. I was looking at it more
like a help. . . . It definitely messed me up. It just took my style, [I thought,] okay,
I’m not writing correctly. I need to do this and reflect on things, you know, and do all
these things. And, I think, I already did that sort of [reflection]. I am a reflector
anyway . . . but trying to write in these different groups and stuff kind of messed me
up,” she said. “I really felt that . . . I was going to have to become a better writer
fi'om this class. I was just going to . . . have so many better attributes after finishing
this class, so it was going to be all right, and I love to write anyway, so it wasjust
like,oh, good,thisisreallygoingtohelpme.. . furtheralong inmywriting,butit
didn’t.”

For her next critical synthesis paper, Bobbi “just didn’t know what to do.”
She explained, “I didn’t knowwhatto putonthepaper . . . andeasreally shortand
briefbecause. . . [the life learningpaper] hadmademelose myconfidenceand . . .
what I knew was the right way to write and what [the instructor] wanted.”

Bobbi recalled that the Module Three instructor had written “Stick with me,
Bobbi,” at the end of her CSP and had given her a “B” grade. “Like he was losing

me, which wasn’t the case” Bobbi said. “It was just like, okay, what do you want? I

83

 

mean, I just sat there, and I never have problem writing. I can usually sit down and
just write, write, write.” Eventually Bobbi said that she went to the Module Three
instructor to let him know that she was “feeling confused and fi'ustrated” about her
writing

In sum, looking back on whether writing the life learning paper improved or
positively changed their attitude or confidence about their writing ability, most
students reported that it did. However, this instrumental or technical learning or
change varied among the participants from positive to negative.
Students ’ Perceptions of Expressive Learning or Change

Some participants interpreted their learning or change in their self-perception
as more expressive or afi'ective. This change seemed to show itself most often in the
participants’ reconciliation or making of peace with past experiences and
relationships. For instance, Cheri saw the writing module as an overall positive
“growing experience” that seemed “to fit in with the rest of [her] Covenant College
experience.” According to her, she was “heavily in education” and had learned
during her incarceration that [she did not] ‘fivant to sit still in life.” During that time,
she had realized what she had done in her life, how badly she had “screwed it up,”
and she did not want to be “stuck” as she was. So her imprisonment “set off part of
[her] drive for education.”

From revisiting her experiences with prayer in her life, which was the topic of
her LLP, Cheri noted “that as little as you think you’ve grown, so often you actually
find that you’ve grown [so] you can’t even see the past anymore. You can hardly

recognize who you were.” She described how at first “the idea of prayer scared” her,

84

but eventually she found herself waking up “in the middle of the night, having
nightmares, and before [being] firlly awake, singing praise songs in [her] head. “So
writing the LLP opened my eyes up to tint [change in me] more than anything [else]”
Cheri concluded.

Ariel found reconstructing her topic of divorce, which she said was her
“expertise,” having been divorced three times, was “very therapeutic.” At the time of
the interview, Ariel was again engaged to be married. But she was resisting the
pressure fi'om her fiancee and people from her church to remarry. “[Writing the life
learning paper] helped me a lot to realize that I’m OK Whereas before people made
me feel uncomfortable . . . I see now I’m OK. It’s OK to be cautious. . . . Before [I
would] just barge in and do it and say, ‘Well, everyone else is saying we should do
it.’ Yeah, [the paper] was really good for me that way,” Ariel concluded. “You’re
telling your story again. . . . Using Kolb’s [Model] . . . sorted it out. . . . You had
your research part of [the paper], so you could feel almost validation [for your own
experiences] . . . because you could find [your knowledge in] other places. Then you
had your [active experimentation, that is, how you applied your knowledge], so that
was therapeutic in the way that you got to get that out some more. Then it made you
stop and think about what you [had] learned and how to apply it to the futtu'e. It did
take you through many thought processes . . . It took you fiom the beginning to the
end, to where a lot of time you could have closure on a lot of things.”

Specifically Ariel said that writing her life learning paper had taken “the panic
out of things or . . . urgency . . . by going through it step by step and doing [the]

paper. [I] could look at [the three divorces], visualize [them], see [them] on paper,

85

and say, ‘Gees, you know, everything has a beginning and an ending. I can
remember that problems [would] come up, [and I would] have this feeling of urgency.
I think I’ve learned from that [paper] that [the urgency] doesn’t need to be there. It is
not necessary. [Writing that paper] helped me realize that life goes on. Things have a
process to go through. You can’t pm one thing before the other because it’s a process
and it has to work its way out and it takes time. . . . So I see all the good things that
came out of [writing that paper in Kolb’s Model]. At the end [I saw] the positive
things that came out of it and how [I] could do things differently. [The process]
helped me to realize there are different choices the next time I face things.”

For Faith, revisiting her topic of marriage and family had actually helped her
to reconcile her divorce. In particular, she resolved her anger and hatred toward her
first husband. “I guess by the time I finished writing the paper, I had never contrasted
the two marriages before. For that [paper] I used both nuniages all through [it], and .
. . I Ind always looked at them as [each] a separate entity and never as something that
one led to the other. . . . I used to absolutely hate my ex-husband, and since writing
that paper and looking and going, you know what? It wasn’t his fault . . . and I
blamed him for everything. . . . In our reflect back . . . we have to really think back
on how things were; it’s just a whole different outlook on how [divorce] just happens,
and some ofthe thingsthatI let happen; and I didn’t realize that I let things happen.
And so it was really nobody’s fault. That’s just the way it turned out, and everything
turned out fine; and if it wasn’t for those experiences, I wouldn’t be where I am

today. So . . . writing the paper did give me that outlook . . .”

86

Faith noted that this fundamental change in her perception of her former
husband came as she was writing her concrete experiences. “And as I was writing
each one [and then the third] . . . religion section . . . I was into that whole religion
mode and . . . how things are supposed to be and how you are supposed to be with
God. . . . About the time I got to . . . putting the third one together . . . that’s when I .
. . started thinking, well, you know what? If I hadn’t done . . . and then I wouldn’t be

. . . and da-ta-da-ta-da, so . . .” Faith said.

Faith described the change as “almost like . . . a weight off my chest. Just like
I had felt that [burden] for so long and . . . blamed [my ex-husband] for everything for
so long, and I shouldn’t have done that because everything was not his fault alone.
And so it was almost like a renewal. I had this weight lifted off me now of all that
anger taken ofl‘ and then a sense of being a new person and just—it was a good
feeling.” Although Faith acknowledged that writing her life learning paper had
helped her “to just let go of all that hard feelings and hatred toward” her former
husband, she still did not “trust” him. “You know, I will never trust him; he’s not a
person who is trustworthy . . . .” Faith concluded.

Even Bobbi, who was very outspoken about her dislike for the course,
admitted that Kolb’s Model was “excellent” in helping her “to take it piece by piece”
and “really reflect” on what it was like to grow up in an alcoholic family, the topic of
her LLP. “That was really a great experience. It really made are feel a lot of things
that I probably hadn’t felt or hadn’t dealt with,” she said. “I learned . . . that my dad
wasthealcoholic, but . . . my momwassuchanenabler. . .. Toseethat [with my

dad being sick and not drinking anymore, my mom] was doing the same thing with

87

my brother that she had done with my dad [i.e., putting his needs before her own]. It
was just like, oh, my goodness, that was amazing to me. I knew what codependency
meant, but not to that degree . . . and just the things that I . . . learned from that
research [for the life learning paper] was just amazing.”

Yet some participants—John and Jan—claimed that they had experienced
little or no expressive learning or change as a result of Module Two. Jan explained,
“I don’t know if I can learn anything more than I’ve already learned fi'om what I had
gone through, I mean, because I’ve gone through all the bases, I think. . . . I’m just
at the point in my life that . . . maturity wise I’m not really scared of anything because
I think you get better mentally, knowledge, just the way you look at life, peace in you.
. . . Things kind of slow down a little bit. I think you are more patient.”

John, although he had much to say about changing the curriculum and
pedagogy of the module, had little to offer as to whether the writing experience had
changed his perception of self. “I don’t think there is any class out there that is
worthy of changing anyone’s life. I think it’s a part of the whole” he concluded.

In sum, the participants’ reflections on the learning-from-prior-learning
experience stimulated expressive or affective learning or change in their self-
perceptions. Most of that change had to do with making peace with prior experience.

Conclusion

In general, the participants’ reflections, understanding, or meaning of the
writing module revealed a theme of learning or change in their self-perception. This
theme seemed to be organized around two dimensions of learning, that is,

instrumental or technical and expressive or affective. Most participants said that

88

their instrumental learning, as a result of writing the Life Learning Paper, appeared as
an attitudinal change and more confidence in their academic writing ability. Most
participants also experienced expressive or affective learning or change in their
perception of self, particularly in regard to reconciling or finding peace with prior
experiences and relationships. In Chapter 5, I will discuss what these descriptions
and reflections could mean not only in the context of this study, but also in the adult

and experience-based learning discourse.

89

Chapter Five
Discussion

Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) is a process used by many postsecondary
institutions to award academic credit to adult learners for knowledge derived from life
experiences. For the most part, PLA has focused on occupational or work-related
experiences. A few institutions have extended this assessment process to significant
life experiences not related to work such as divorce, job loss, or drug and alcohol
recovery. However, we know relatively little about adult learners’ experience in these
programs. The life events that are often the focus of this process represent powerful,
emotional experiences in the learners’ lives. For this reason, I sought to develop a
deeper understanding of their experience with such a process. In-depth interviews
were conducted with six learners enrolled in an accelerated, degree-completion
program at Covenant College, a smalL church-based, liberal arts institution located in
a small town in southwest Michigan.

The adults’ experiences in the assessment module reflect a preoccupation with
meeting its technical or instrumental challenges. Despite its unconventional and
nontraditional focus and processes, the experience itself is interpreted by the students
as a fairly traditional academic experience. Yet it elicited strong feelings and
emotions such as anxiety, confusion, anger, and fi'ustration. These feelings and
emotions are elicited, however, fi'om dealing with the technical writing requirements
themselves and not fiom revisiting the experiences associated with prior life events.

Participation in this process appears to have contributed to some increase in

self-awareness among the learners. Although one would anticipate such an outcome

90

 

of experiential learning activities, the process described by these learners illustrates a
more complicated form of learning, one in which there are two forms of experiential
learning occurring concurrently, with different levels of engagement by the learners
and different outcomes. In this chapter, the theoretical implications of these findings
will be discussed, as well as the implications for practice and further research in adult
or experiential learning and assessment of prior learning.

Theoretical Implications of Study

The Assessment of Prior Private Learning (APPL) is a process of learning to
write by reflecting on and writing about a prior life experience, and then connecting
the learning fi'om that experience to a broader body of knowledge. This overall
process is grounded in two forms of experience-based learning. In one form, the
students learn to write by writing; that is they learn by doing (Boud, Cohen, and
Walker, 1993). In the second form, the students are learning from prior experiences
by identifying meaningful life events, reflecting on them, writing about them, and
connecting what they are learning from this process to a broader body of knowledge.
The first form of experiential learning involves a reworking of their sense of self as a
writer, while the second form evokes a reconstruction of the meaning these prior life
experiences hold for the learners.

Learning by doing. The descriptions of the APPL process provided by the
learners reflect their reliance on learning by doing. They seemed preoccupied with the
writing process itselfand its technical, theoretically based, checklist of demands (i.e.,
Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning). These requirements grab the learners’

attention and keep them preoccupied or worried for most of the assessment of prior

91

learning experience. During this process, they described powerful feelings and
emotions such as anxiety, confusion, fi'ustration, stress, and insecurity.

This process of learning to write within a prescribed format evoked powerful
emotions and therefore suggests a strong involvement of self. Yet there is little
evidence that the learners reflected on the experience itself, the task of learning how
to write by writing, or the learners themselves as persons learning how to write. We
glimpse aspects of the selfthrough their emotional reactions to the prospects of
writing, but these powerful reactions are interpreted as byproducts of the task and
never bring the self to the foreground in an explicit way (Tisdell, 1998).

The participants generally described Kolb’s Model as a framework for a way
of writing, instead of its intended purpose, that is, a theory for a form of adult
learning. Ariel, for one, saw Covenant College’s unusual interpretation or use of
Kolb’s Model as a good thing. “[It] . . . made it a lot easier to write a paper,” she
concluded. While Ariel felt the model helped her write, other participants felt more
like Bobbi. “. . . I didn’t care for it. I felt like I was very confident, a very good
writer . . . and I struggled with that type of wrrtmg It was awful” she concluded. “I
was trying to write in that Kolb’s. Yeah, I’m using the examples, and I’m trying to
put it in the sections, and I was getting so frustrated because I wasn’t just writing.”

John described the writing of the life learning paper as “memorable.” “We
werenew;itwastraumatic; itwastoughstufl‘; . . . itwasbyfaroneofthe most
memorable experiences any of us had had up to that point” he explained. “You’ve
got new students who are just learning to write and now you’re going to teach them to

write in a whole different fashion, so there [is] a lot of stress associated with change.

92

And when there is already so much change as new adult students, [the life learning
paper] was just one more thing . . . and it confused you. I realize that you have to
teach it early because you’re going to have to write life learning papers over the next
12 months and have those done. And I can see where that’s logical, but it made it
tough. And that’s where I would have . . . taught it differently. And I think [the
instructor] even speculated he would teach it differently.”

John seemed to have captured well the dilemma or tension between the
curricular demands or requirements and the students’ needs or weaknesses as writers.
In particular, the latter seem to be lack of confidence or a poor attitude about writing.
However, the evidence does seem to suggest that writing the life learning papers does
have a positive effect or change on these emotional or psychological blocks
(Mezirow, 1991). What is required of the learners is an accommodation of an
unusual model of learning how to write (i.e., Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning)
into their initial writer’s identity or style, and this adaptation must be done soon after
arriving at Covenant College. For those who make this accommodation quickly and
easily, they seem to experience a positive attitudinal change and greater confidence in
their writing ability and thus their ability to graduate fi'om the program.

In sum, what obviously rivets the learners’ attention and stirs up their feelings
andemotionsthemostisthe structureofthepaperand learning howto write by
writing and using an unusual format. The learners complain that this technical or
mechanistic way of writing or, more accurately, organizing a paper interferes or
blocks their previous writing style. They found the process confusing, frustrating,

and stressful, as accommodating any foreign language into one’s native tongue might

93

 

 

prove challenging. Although the powerful feelings and emotions that the participants
described in their encounter with learning how to write suggest a strong involvement
of the self(Cranton, 1994; Dirkx, 2001; Mezirow, 1991), it remains oddly only
implicit in this form of experiential learning. The learning-by-doing aspect of the
APPL process evoked opportunities for self-reflective learning (Boud, Keogh, &
Walker, 1985; Brookfield, I987; Dirkx, 2000; Mezirow, 1991; Tennant, 1995) that
were not exploited in the module.

Learning from prior experience. In addition to the learning to write by writing
(learning by doing), the participants also described a form of experiential learning in
which they revisited and reflected upon a prior life experience, what I refer to as
learning from experience. In contrast to the learning-by-doing dimension of this
experience, their descriptions of learning fi'om experience suggest a reconstruction of
the meaning of these prior experiences within their present lives. In the learning-
from-experience process, there is evidence that the involvement of the self is explicit
and the focus of the writing experience. How deep this new learning was, however,
seems to be related to the learner’s level of engagement in reflecting upon or
questioning their prior experience. Two of the participants seem to have resisted or
refused to engage holistically (Bond, Keogh, & Walker, 1993) in the APPL
experience. It is as if they only reported about their prior experience and the learning
that they acquired at that time. During the reconstruction of prior experience, they
remained aloof and unemotional, engaging in only minimal and superficial reflection
or thought about their prior experience. For instance, John described his method of

reflection as follows:

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Well, I guess, reflective observation is certainly first person, and the concrete
experience is what you did. But even reflective observation, I think, it’s a
whole warm, fuzzy section I dread. I hate it. I hate it. As a matter of fact, I
had written a concrete experience, and I . . . just stopped because I said, oh,
here’s that, and I didn’t even know where to go then. So I said, all right. I
typically try to write three paragraphs for each section, and it spaces out
about right, so it’s a page, page plus. So I look back, concrete experience,
what’s my first paragraph say? Okay, what does that mean to me, what did I
see in that first paragraph? Try to write another paragraph [of] reflective
observation. And that’s just the way I have to approach it, methodically.
An argument could be made that John failed to engage holistically in the
APPL experience because of his topic (i.e., sales), which was more professional or
public in nature than most life learning paper topics. But be titled his paper “Sales
and Life” and talked about basic human values such as communicating with honesty
and integrity and leading with trust and vision. From the evidence and my own
experience of teaching APPL, these subjects, especially what learners know about
communication, are often written about no nutter the topic of the life learning paper.
For example, Faith, who wrote about a very personal or private topic (i.e., divorce),
also wrote about communication in relationships.
Furthermore, John stated that he would approach the reflection in the same
methodical way for all seven of the life learning papers that he planned to write. His
plan was to write one a month within the program’s 58 weeks, so he could avoid

taking any courses outside of the program to earn the credits to graduate with his

95

cohort. Some of his other topics would be much more private such as spiritual
growth. Yet he seemed unable or unwilling to accept the importance of critical
reflection in learning more deeply about self. He actually wanted to remove it from
Kolb’s Model. He recommended his own model:

. . . To me it would be the three-step process. You did something, that’s

fme—have the experience. You learn something, talk about what that was

and what significance it has, and the final step, how you apply that and

what it has meant to your life. That’s the analytical person in me.

Perhaps even with his analytical or cognitive approach, John was more
engaged emotionally and reflectively in his writing than his words would indicate.
But when asked directly whether he was changed in any way by the APPL
experience, John said, “I don’t think there is any class out there that is worthy of
changing anyone’s life.” He did, however, admit that his confidence in his writing
skills grew. He was even thinking about writing a book But evidently while writing
the life learning paper, no new or deeper learning about his prior experience or
himself occurred.

Appareme the same thing could be said about Jan. When asked whether she
had learned anything new or changed from revisiting her topic of infertility, Jan said,
“I don’t know if I can learn anything more than I’ve already learned from what I had
gone through, I mean, because I’ve gone through all the bases, I think.” She
explained this lack of change on the “. . . point in my life that . . . maturity wise, I’m

not really scared of anything because I think you get better mentally, knowledge, just

96

the way you look at life, peace in you. . . . Things kind of slow down a little bit. I
think you are more patient.”

In short, even though Assessment of Prior Private Learning has seemingly
great potential for deeper self-awareness or learning, some learners missed the
opportrmity by resisting or refirsing to engage actively and holistically and to reflect
critically on their prior experience, whether public or private in nature.

Other learners such as Ariel, Faith, and Bobbi, however, did engage in a
learning experience that resulted in a deeper understanding of self, suggesting a
transformative experience. By transformative learning I mean reflective learning that
finds assumptions or premises to be distorted, inauthentic, or invalid.
“Transformative learning results in new or transformed meaning schemes or, when
reflection focuses on premises, transformed meaning perspectives” (Mezirow, 1991,
p. 6). Therefore the learners have a deep or profound change in self-identity and are
unwilling or unable to return to a previous state of being. The learners redefine
themselves in relationship to others and rmke significant, life-altering changes in
their behavior. For example, Ariel postponed, for the first time, getting married,
which would have been her fourth marriage. Faith admitted, for the first time, her
responsibility in the break up of her marriage and expressed a willingness to forgive
her husband for the hurt and humiliation that she felt as a result of his unfaithfirlness;
and Bobbi recognized, for the first time, her anger and resentment toward her co-
dependent parents, that is, her alcoholic father and enabling mother, and was
beginning to deal with her feelings and emotions, especially toward her brother whom

she also recognized as in a co-dependent relationship with their mother. She admitted

97

 

that Kolb’s Model was “excellent” in helping her “to take it piece by piece” and
“really reflect” on what it was like to grow up in an alcoholic family.

Others’ level of learning seemed to be something less than transformative.
Cheri, for instance, described her learning fi'om writing about her incarceration in a
military prison as more affirmation or corroborative of her grth and development
since prior transformative experience (Tennant, 1995; Pratt, 1998). She noted “that
as little as you think you’ve grown, so often you actually find that you’ve grown [so]
you can’t even see the past anymore. You can hardly recognize who you were.”

By its very nature assessment of prior learning externalizes or objectifies or
problematizes the learners’ private prior experience in the form of written
documentation and puts it and thus the learners into relationship with each other and
the instructor through the sharing of these documents (Tennant, 2000). So as they are
writing the papers, most learners who are successful in this APPL environment are
engaged actively in not only a new experience, but also revisiting and restructuring a
previous private experience. In other words, as the learners’ are busy with the
publicized subject of the course, that is, research writing, their subjective or private
learning experiences are also becoming a “subject” and thus the “object” of public
attention and discourse; namely, their life learning papers.

In essence, the Assessment of Prior Private Learning seems to be a way for
learners to “reauthor” themselves (Merriam and Caffarella, 1999). The depth of this
“reauthoring” or redefining or relearning of self could be explained, not by
differences in topics, but by differences in the degree of engagement or critical

reflection among the learners. In contrast to John and Jan, the other four participants

98

 

seemed more emotionally engaged and reflected more deeply about their prior
experience. As noted above, Bobbi, Ariel, and Cheri all saw Kolb’s Model as more
than a college requirement for organizing a paper or improving their writing skills.
None ever suggested that the reflective mode be eliminated or combined with another
one. Instead, Bobbi and Ariel, in particular, acknowledged that the critical reflection,
although emotional and difficult, lead to positive and profound changes in their
perception, attitude, and assumptions about their prior experience and thus their
present behavior and interactions with others. Faith described her reflective
experience and learning as follows:
Forthe [paper]Iusedbothmarriages. . . andI’dnever. . . lookedatthemas
...separate[entities]andneveras. ..oneledtotheother. Andsolhavea
whole different outlook on how things are now. I used to absolutely hate my
ex- husband, and since writing that paper and looking and going, you know
wint? It wasn’t his fault. . .. I blamed him for everything . . . in our reflect
back. . . we [had] to really think back on how things were; it’s just a whole
different outlook on how it just happens and some of the things that I let
happenandldidn’trealizc thatIIetthingshappen. . . . Writingthepaper
did give me that outlook that . . . I had to go through those experiences to be
wholamtoday,andifl hadn’t.. .I wouldn’tbewherelam.
This thorough and deep reflection seemed to be missing fiom John’s method
of writing life learning papers. Avoiding this type of critical thinking about his prior
experience—personal or professional—was probably why he “looked forward to” and

found “traditional writing easier.” About that kind of writing, he ermlained, “You’re

talking about . . . communications, so you may touch on three areas, but you’re not
following each one on Kolb's Model, and it’s more traditional introductions, support
information, and a closing paragraph. . . . It seems more natural because . . . here’s
what you did, here’s what you learned, here’s how to use it, sort of thing.”

What seems to be missing from John’s description of “traditional writing” is
the personal nature of the content and the reflective mode that is required writing in
the structure of Kolb’s Model, where one thinks deeply, not only about one’s own
perspective, but also that of others’, and questions widely the learning tlmt might have
occurred as a result of the experience. Perhaps these two pieces of the LLP writing
process make it more challenging, that is, more emotional and thus more difficult for
students to accommodate it into their identity as academic writers. For with the life
learning papers, students for the first time must take a stand based mostly on what
they think and know fi‘om their own experience, not what others think about it, which
is not the case with more traditional academic writing and contrary to what and how
most students have been taught in school. Therefore, at the same time they are
starting a new program and writing their first traditional paper, probably for the first
time in a long time, they are also being introduced to a nontraditional and unique
method of wrrtmg And this writing is unusual in more than content and structure. It
is also represents not only a grade for a required course, but also many other credits in
their bid to complete their bachelor’s degree within a matter of months. It is high
risk. Furthermore, as John pointed out, it is early on in a new academic game, and
any transition or change is often accompanied by stress, confusion, and resistance to

accommodation and thus learning.

100

In sum, the study clearly shows that the APPL experience actively engages or
stimulates most learners. They are also holistically engaged, that is, all learning
domains—cognitive, affective, and conative—are involved as they critically reflect
upon or think about their prior experience and reconstruct that experience to meet not
only the college’s goals, but also their own (Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985). In
contrast to the learning by doing, in the learning fiom prior experience, the self is
explicitly present, and the revisiting or reconstruction of the meaning of the prior
experience seems often to result in some form of learning or change in the learner’s
self-perception.

Whether the learning or change in self-perception is instrumental or
expressive seems to depend, in part, on the degree of engagement of the learner—the
deeper the involvement, the deeper or more expressive the learning. Among the
participants, Jan was a learner who reflected very little as she revisited or
reconstructed her prior experience of infertility and candidly admitted that she learned
nothing new from the experience. In contrast, other participants such as Ariel, Faith,
and Bobbi all reflected deeply and critically on their respective prior experiences and
gained new meaning perspectives about themselves and their worlds (Mezirow,
19991).

Yet, considering the personal, expressive nature of these prior experiences, the
fact that most of the strong, deeply held, and painful feelings and emotions associated
with them (e.g., Faith’s hatred of her former husband) are only implicit in the
descriptions of the participants’ reflections upon the learning-from-prior-learning

experience. But most of the participants never mentioned such feelings and emotions.

lOl

So the question remains, How can we make sense of the way the learners talk or do
not talk about the feelings and emotions associated with their prior experiences?

Making sense of absence of feelings and emotions associated with prior
experience. Although strong emotions such as anxiety, confusion, frustration, and
stress are abundantly evident in the findings, these feelings seem to be triggered
mostly fiom the learning-to-write experience, not the learning-from-prior- learning
experience of writing their Life Learning Papers. One explanation for this
unexpected finding is that in some ways the second module in their program is a
make or break experience for the adult learners. Because the entire program is
writing intensive, if they fail to meet the challenge of successfully completing their
first two writing assignments, the learners’ chance of successfully completing the
program and their bachelor’s degrees is in jeopardy.

The students come to their second course with the paper fi'om their first course
in hand. During the previous week they have been dealing virtually on their own with
this writing assignment, which determines 60 percent of their final grade. Then, with
only some limited help from the writing specialist, who teaches the second course, the
students are sent home again to struggle with not only completing that first paper, but
also starting an even larger and more complicated writing assignment called a life
learning paper. This paper also stands for 60 percent of the students’ grade. But for
most it also represents from two to seven credits in the completion of their degree. So
the stakes are high for the students as they enter the writing module.

Yet most of the students are focused on only one thing—whether they have

the ability to write well enough to complete the paper. Therefore, as they enter the

102

writing module, the learners are full of anxiety, frustration, and fear. This fact alone,
however, is not surprising. Students often find composition exasperating and scary.
What is surprising is the apparent fact that any strong feelings or emotions that the
learners stir up fi‘om revisiting their prior life events are often overshadowed by those
elicited from their experience of learning how to use Kolb’s Model as a structure of a
paper. So based on the study’s evidence, an argument may be made that Module
Two, Critical Analysis and Research Writing, is shaped by the mostly negative and
strong feelings and emotions experienced by the learners; that is, anxiety, confusion,
stress, and frustration. And these are only the affective responses mainly to the ' ‘
module’s unusual use of Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning as a framework of
learning how to write.

What is not evident fi‘om the study’s findings and comes only fi'om my own
observations from teaching the module for five years is the additional stress or
pressure that the students are under as neophytes in their accelerated degree-
completion program. After only six weeks and one course, they are just beginning to
understand, not only intellectually, but also afl‘ectively, what personal or professional
changes are required in their lives to be successful in the program’s accelerated
format. Then as they struggle to make these changes, the students are further required
to adjust or stretch their academic skills, especially their writing skills. By definition
most have been out of school a minimum of two years and most for much longer.

Moreover, their prior experience with academic writing may be less than positive or

 

supportive. So as they enter the writing module they are feeling fearful, insecure, or

103

 

uncomfortable about themselves as writers and worried about whether they can write
well enough to be successful in this adult or experiential learning environment.

Then they are ahnost immediately asked to write a long, difficult paper that
until that point had been referred to as either a way to turn their prior experiences into
college credits or to improve their writing skills. The focus has been completely on
the instrumental nature of the experience, and the findings show that the learners’ do
experience instrumental or mechanistic learning or change in their attitude or self-
confidence in the ability to write academically, as a result of learning-to-write
experience. But along with this instrumental learning, most learners experience
expressive or affective learning or change in their perceptions of self, as a result of
the leaming-fiom-prior—learning experience.

This latter result often occurs fiom the kind of intentional or reflective writing
that the life learning paper provides. Yet this deeper learning about self is treated
almost like an unimportant and unavoidable side efi‘ect, instead of something that
should or could be nurtured and emphasized as an important part of any learning
experience (Dirkx, 1997, 2001; Mezirow, 1990; Pratt, 1998).

Another explanation for the lack of descriptions of the learners’ feelings and
emotions intheir descriptions of writing about prior experience could be the high
degree of anxiety still associated with that experience. Having only recently revisited
those feelings and emotions with the writing of the life learning paper, the
participants may have avoided stirring them up again in the research interviews.
Furthermore, in those interviews the participants were given their first chance to

critically reflect upon the learning-to-write experience; therefore, their feelings and

104

emotions about it may have been stronger and more volatile than those associated
with the prior learning experience. For the latter they may have already found a new
or deeper sense of self and different ways of acting toward others. So they had a
sense of closure for that prior learning. Most, if not all, the participants could be
categorized in either one of these explanations for lack of feelings and emotions
associated with learning from prior experience.

However, Bobbi could be an example of a third explanation for the absence of
feelings and emotions associated with the learning-fiom-prior-learning experience.
This explanation could be defined as a learner’s “psychological block.” In this case
although the learner is “aware that he or she is not functioning well, that something is
getting in the way of being the autonomous and responsible adult he or she aspires to
be,” he or she is anxious and fearful of change or, more specifically, the possibility of
regretting making a change. He or she therefore remains blocked, that is, unwilling to
reflect critically on his or her “distorted psychological premises,” most resulting from
childhood traumas, and the pain, hurt, and anger that this form of self-scrutiny might
provoke (Mezirow, 1991, pp. 138-139).

In her interviews every time the subject of her family or her childhood would
be mentioned, Bobbi would divert attention back to her confirsion, fi'ustration, and
strong dislike of the writing module and her disappointing grade in it and the
following module. There is evidence that she confronted some of her feelings about
her difficult childhood and, in particular, her mother, while writing her life learning
paper. However, these feelings were only implicit in the interviews, and she was very

reluctant to share her life learning paper.

105

Although Bobbi appeared to have cracked open some of her psychological
defenses by writing “piece by piece” and “really [reflecting]” on what it was like to
grow up in an alcoholic family, she seemed to retreat from further breakthrough by
diverting her attention and feelings toward the learning-to-write experience, instead
of the learning from prior experience. Months later she was still upset about her
experience in the writing module. “1 have a lot to say about Module Two. When you
came in [to talk about the study], it was like I didn’t care for it. I felt like I was very
confident, a very good writer, and . . . I had been doing classes at the community
college, had done classes at [regional public university]. I had always gotten A+s,
As, great grades on my papers, and I struggled with tlurt type of writing. It was
awfirl,” said Bobbi. Thus she was able to construct a new psychological block,
projecting her anger and disappointment onto the assessment of prior learning process
and her grade, instead of confronting her anger and hurt with her parents and risk
making profound changes in her sense of self and her relations with her family
members (Boyd, 1991; Dirkx, 1997).

Finally, the lack of explicit feelings and emotions associated with the learning
fiom prior experience may be only an artifact of the study. The appropriate questions
that may have elicited these emotions were simply overlooked or missed in both the
scheduled and follow-up questions.

Making sense of role of experience in learning by doing. Then there is the
curious role of experience in this experience-based learning context. According to
the writing module’s curriculum, Covenant College’s notion of experience is explicit,

based on Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning. This view of experience and its

106

 

role in adult learning is then translated into a method or model for a learning-to-write
experience. As such, according to the curriculum, the learners are shown, with
techniques called “prewriting” (e. g., brainstorming, free writing, self-interviewing),
how to identify “learning outcomes” from their prior experience.

This personal knowledge then becomes aspects or points of a life learning
paper’s thesis statement. These points, in turn, are developed and supported by both
the reconstruction of the learner’s specific prior experience, using the four modes of
Kolb’s Model—concrete experience (CE), reflective observation (RO), abstract
concept (AC), and active experimentation (AE)——and the broader body of knowledge
from which the learner’s personal knowledge is grounded.

There is curricular and instructional support to help the learners differentiate
each mode’s purpose, activity, and language. In particular, the learner is instructed to
change his or her voice from subjective to objective, depending on the mode. For CE,
R0, and AE, the learner writes in first person pronoun “I.” In AC third person
pronouns—“he,” “she,” or “theY’—are used. In general the experience could be
described as technical, rule-based, and structured, and even with the supportive
curriculum and instruction, the learners find it confusing, frustrating, and stressful, as
documented by the study.

This notion or use of experience is rare, if not, unique in experiential or adult
learning discourse. Kolb (I984) himself defined “learning” as a “process,” not
“learning outcomes.” “Ideas are not fixed and immutable elements of thought but are
formed and re-formed through experience” (Kolb, 1984, p. 26). He firrther defined

“experience” as a transaction or situation that goes on between a person and his or her

107

environment (Kolb, 1984, p. 35). So accordingly, the learners’ learning-by-doing
experience could be defined as the transaction or situation of assessment of prior
learning in which they interact internally or individually (e.g., with the curriculum or
instructor) and socially or collaboratively (e.g., with peers). But, as previously noted,
there is no evidence that the learners critically reflect on their learning-to-write-by-
writing experience, which, if done at the time, might turn the learning-by-doing
experience into new or deeper learning or awareness about self (Boud, Keogh, &
Walker, 1985; Cranton, 1994; Dirkx, 2001; Mezirow, 1990).

There is certainly enough evidence to show that the learners are engaged
actively and holistically in the learning-to-write-by-writing experience and primed
emotionally for a deeper level of learning beyond the technical or instrumental
learning that was reported. Thus by not providing curricular opportunities for
debriefing or critically reflecting on the writing experience, “teaching (or learning)
moments” seem to be missed (Dirkx, 2001; Dirkx & Prenger, 1997).

Practical Implications of Study

Based on this apparent missing of “teaching moments,” one practical
implication of the study would be to add debriefing or critical reflection exercises,
both individual and group activities, to the assessment of prior learning curriculum.
For example, a one or two-page journal entry could be assigned each week in tandem
with the “circle” of the life learning paper. In the journal entry the learner would be
encouraged to reflect upon his or her feelings about the writing process and how those
feelings reflect upon him or her as a person or a learner (Cameron; 1992; De Salvo,

1999; Goldberg, 1986).

108

 

 

These journal articles could then be used for either full class or small group
discussions about the writing process and what it means not only as an individual, but
also as a group or collective (Brookfield, 1987; Mezirow, 1991, Tennant, 1995). If
used for in-class revision or editing exercises, the reflective papers could also be used
as a way to improve the learners’ instrumental or technical writing skills.
Furthermore, if these shorter papers were used for peer review, that is, shared out
loud in small groups with the intent of listening for certain content, the learners’
listening, collaborative learning, and editing skills could also be developed.

Yet because of the accelerated nature of the course and its already very firll
curriculum, the practicality of these suggestions would have to be studied. It is clear,
nonetheless, that since assessment of prior learning is clearly grounded in experience-
based learning, some critical reflection on the writing process itselfis called for. In
so doing the learners’ strong feelings and emotions about the experience could be
relieved and deeper learning about self could be nurtured (Boud, Keogh, & Walker,
1985; Dirkx, 2001; Dirkx & Prenger, 1997; Mezirow, 1991; Tennant, 1995).

Further Research Implications of the Study

Perhaps the lack of strong feelings and emotions as the participants described
their learning fiom prior experience was only an artifact of the study. This
speculation calls for further study. The researcher may have failed to ask the
appropriate primary or follow-up questions that would have elicited the emotional
responses to the participants’ prior learning experiences. Further questioning could

uncover the feelings that were only implicit in this study.

109

 

 

Another possibility for the lack of strong feelings and emotions as the
participants described their learning fi'om prior experience could be explained by the
apparent overshadowing of them as the participants talked about their strong feelings
and emotions triggered by the learning-to-write experience. Yet those feelings and
emotions are not addressed explicitly in curricular or instructional support of the
module. Actually, the entire affective or expressive aspect of learning, although
clearly strong and volatile in this experience-based learning context, seems to have
been overlooked or neglected. Whether this apparent oversight lras been intentional,
as a result of institutional, social, or cultural pressures and priorities, is a question that
calls for future study.

Further study of Covenant College’s unusual interpretation of experience and
Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning as an adult teaching tool is also
recommended. As a learning-to-write fiame, the questions remain: Is the institution’s
use of the Kolb Model achieving its educative goals and commitment to adult and
experiential learning? Are the adult learners’ writing skills improving? Are they
gaining self-confidence as writers in this very writing-intense program? From the
reflections of the participants, the answers to these questions seem to be mixed and
therefore further inquiry is called for.

Moreover, the learning-to-write literature does call for the use of learners’
experience (Cameron, 1992; De Salvo, 1999; Goldberg, 1986; Murray, 1998) and
models (Zinsser, 1988). These models, however, are literary such as autobiographies,
letters, and journal entries. This study appears to be the first time Kolb’s Model of

Experiential Learning has been put forward as a learning-to-write theory and practice

110

 

 

for adults in an experience-based learning environment. Further study therefore is
recommended to evaluate its merits and distractions as both a learning-to-write
framework and a heuristic tool.

Another somewhat surprising finding that calls for firrther study was the
participants’ mixed reviews of the forum phase of the writing process; namely,
sharing stories or peer review. Collaborative learning is a hallmark of adult learning
pedagogy (Boyd, 1991, Brookfield, 1987; Dirkx & Smith, in press; Mezirow, 1991,
Tennant, 1995). Yet, most of study’s participants expressed suspicion or mistrust of
this strategy as it is practiced in the writing module. Their perceptions of peer group
learning reflects the claim by other researchers that many adult learners remain
profoundly ambivalent about small group learning (Brookfield, 1986; Dirkx & Smith,
in press; Dirkx & Smith, 2003; Smith & Berg, 1987)) But further study is called for
to inform both the theory and practice of this strategy in experience-based learning

Conclusion

In this study I defined the Assessment of Prior Private Learning (APPL) as a
process of learning to write by reflecting on and writing about a prior life experience,
and then connecting the learning fi'om that experience to a broader body of
knowledge. The purpose and goal of APPL was for adult learners to earn college
credits for the knowledge that they had acquired fiom personal life experiences.
Based on the participants’ descriptions, I concluded that the APPL process at
Covenant College was grounded in two forms of experience-based learning: learning
fi'om prior experience and experiential learning. The latter form, specifically learning

to write by writing, evidently grabbed the learners’ attention and stirred up their

111

 

feelings and emotions more than learning from prior experience. Most of their strong
feelings and emotions of anxiety and frustration seemed to be associated with the
structure of the paper (i.e., a format based on Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning)
and learning how to write by writing. The learners complained that this technical or
mechanistic way of writing or, more accurately, organizing a paper interfered or
blocked their previous writing style.

Yet these strong feelings and emotions clearly showed that the APPL
experience actively engaged or stimulated most learners. They were also actively and
holistically engaged as they critically reflected upon or thought about their prior
experience and reconstructed that experience to meet not only the college’s goals, but
also their own. In contrast to the learning by doing, in the learning fiom prior
experience, the selfwas explicitly present, and the revisiting or reconstruction of the
meaning of the prior experience often seemed to result in some form of learning or
change in the learner’s self-perception.

Whether the learning or change in self-perception was instrumental or
expressive seemed to depend, in part, on the degree of engagement of the learner—
the deeper the involvement, the deeper or more expressive the learning. Yet,
considering the personal, expressive nature of these prior experiences, the fact
remained that most of the strong, deeply held, and painful feelings and emotions
associated with them were only implicit in the descriptions of the participants’
reflections upon the learning-fiom-prior-leaming experience. Several explanations
for this finding. were put forward. One, it was simply an artifact of the study in which

questions that would have elicited these feelings and emotions were not asked and

112

 

called for firrther study. Two, psychological blocks prevented the learners from
addressing their strong, difiicult, or painful feelings and emotions associated with
their prior learning experience, and therefore they projected those feelings onto the
learning-to-write experience. Three, the learners had found closure or peace with the
feelings and emotions associated with their prior learning experience by writing their
Life Learning Paper and chose not to stir them up again in the research interviews.
Four, the writing module was a make or break experience for the learners in which
their success or failure in the program relied on their ability to learn how to write a
Life Learning Paper. Thus, their strong feelings and emotions were focused on the
experiential learning aspect of APPL and not the learning from prior experience.

The notion of experience in the writing module was also a curiosity. The
institution explicitly defined “experience” based on Kolb’s Model of Experiential
Learning. Yet, the model was used not as it was intended (i.e., a fiamework for
adults learning how to learn from experience), but as an outline for adults learning
how to write by writing or a method of experiential learning. Nevertheless, it seemed
to engage learners actively and holistically and therefore presented the possibility of
learning more deeply about one’s self-identity as a writer or learner. But there was no
cruricular or instructional support for this kind of expressive learning. In other
words, no reflection on the experience of learning to write by writing was afforded in
the module. The practical implication therefore was that some kind of debriefing or
reflection upon the writing process itself should become part of the curriculum.

This practical implication also called for firrther study as the course content

was already packed and the timefiame short. Furthermore, whether the lack of

113

 

attention of the clearly strong and volatile feelings and emotions associated with this
experience-based learning context had been intentional, as a result of institutional,
social, or cultural pressures and priorities, was also a question that called for firture
study.

Because of the participants’ mixed reflections of the writing module, further
study of Covenant College’s unusual interpretation of experience and Kolb’s Model
of Experiential Learning as an adult teaching tool was also recommended. Some of
the questions that remained were whether the institution’s use of the Kolb Model was
achieving its educative goals and commitment to adult and experiential learning,
whether the adult learners’ writing skills were improved, whether they gained self-
confidence as writers in a very writing-intense program?

Moreover, the models put forth in the adult learning-to-write discourse were
more literary such as autobiographies, letters, and journal entries. This study
appeared to be the first time Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning had been put
forward as a learning-to-write theory and practice for adults in an experience-based
learning environment. Further study therefore was recommended to evaluate its pros
and cons as both a learning-to-write fiamework and an adult teaching and learning
tool.

Finally, another somewhat surprising finding that called for firrther study was
the participants’ mixed reviews of the fourth phase of the writing process; namely,
sharing stories or peer review. As a hallmark of adult teaching and learning,
collaborative learning at Covenant College is not only an espoused theory, but also a

theory in use. Yet, according to the study’s findings, it was received mostly with

114

 

suspicion and mistrust in the writing module. The learners’ perceptions of peer group
learning reflected the claim by other researchers and called for firrther study of both
the theory and practice of this strategy in experience-based learning

In conclusion, as with most studies while some questions were answered,
many more were exposed. Nevertheless, the overarching question of the study
seemed to be addressed, that is, the nature of the adult learning experience in the
writing module at Covenant College has been described in five themes, phases, or
sets of activities for the learners. Within each set particular behaviors, emotions, and
issues were identified by the learners. The outstanding characteristic for each set
seemed to be the learners’ implicit or explicit feelings or emotions.

The nature of this experience could also be described as the nexus between
two forms of adult or experience-based learning; namely, experiential or learning by
doing and learning fi'om prior experience or Assessment of Prior Private Learning. In
this experience-based context, two forms of learning emerged fi'om the participants’
descriptions; namely, instrumental and expressive. The instrumental learning or
change seemed to result in an improved attitude and eflicacy in their academic
writing ability. The expressive learning or change seemed to result in a confirmation
or transformation of self-identity and peace-making with others associated with their
prior life experience. The significance or depth of their learning seemed to depend on
how actively and holistically the learners engaged in the experienced-based nature of

the writing module.

115

 

Appendices A - D

Participants’ Consent Form

Interview 1: Life History

Interview 2: Details of Module 2

Interview 3: Reflection on the Meaning of the Experience

116

 

Appendix A
Participant Consent Form

Interview Study
April 2002

As part of my EAD 999 Dissertation research at Michigan State University, College
of Educational Administration Adult Life Long Education Program, I am conducting
an in-depth study to investigate the experience of adult students who have
participated in a prior learning assessment course that required extensive writing.

The purpose of the study is to add to the adult learning, prior learning assessment, and
adult learning for development and change scholarship. Specifically, the question for

the study is, What is the nature of the experience that students have in Module 2
(WRT 312, Critical Analysis and Research Writing )?

During a three-interview series, you will be asked questions about your experiences
both before returning to college and while taking Module 2, WRT 312, Critical
Analysis and Research Writing. Each interview will last no more than 90 minutes.
All three interviews will be completed during the month of April 2002, one each
week for three weeks, beginning the week of April 15. I may also ask to read your
Life Learning Papers, if that is agreeable to you.

The interviews will be audio tape recorded. The information that I collect fi'om you
will not be used in any way that would reflect on you personally and will not in any
way reflect your grade in this course or your subsequent coursework. As I have not
and will not be your instructor in any course, I will not have any influence on you or
your grades in your program. What you say to nye will be held in strict confidence
and anonmfl' to the greatest extent allowable by Lay. I will not use your rfl mes,
places, or settmg' s in any remrt of the data. I will use only alphabetical letters,
numbers, or pseudonyms to identfiy' each interviewee.

 

Your micipation in this My is vow and you may wit hdraw at any time.
If you choose to participate in this study, I hope that you remain involved and
committed for its entire three-week duration. If you are willing to Midge, please

srg' n the Ensent Mement glow.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact the investigator, John Dirkx,
PhD., by mail (Department of Educational Administration, Michigan State
University, 408 Erickson Hall, East Lansing, MI, 48824) by phone, 517-353-8927, by
fax (517-353-6393, or e mail, dirkx@msu.edu. If you have questions or concerns
regarding your rights as a study participant you may contact Ashir Kumar, M.D.,
Chair of the University Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects

(UCRIHS) by phone: (517) 355-2180, fax: (5170 432-4503, email: ucrihs@msu.edu
or regular mail: 202 Olds Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824

117

 

Informed Consent Form, p. 2

Sincerely,

Falinda Geerling

Doctoral Candidate

Michigan State University

If you have any further questions, you may contact me at (616) 735-0630 or
falindag@arbor.edu.

I agree to participate in this study as described above.

Date:

Full Name (please print):

Signature:

Address:

Phone (home):

Cell:

Fax:

E Mail:

118

 

Appendix B
Interview 1: Life History

The purpose of Interview 1 is to establish the context or setting of the research. The
time allotted is between 60 and 90 minutes. ‘

l.

E"

How did you come to participant in the Covenant College (CC) Adult Studies
Program and thus Module 2? What difference did returning to college make in
your life?
Although we will focus our attention on your experience in Module 2, I would
like to explore other learning experiences in your life for now?
A. How did you decide to come back to college?
B. What do you hope to accomplish with your college degree?
What can you tell me about your family? Work? Community?
Demographic Information
A. Age
B. Race
C. Gender
D. Income Range
. 0 - $15,000
$15,000 - $30,000
$30,000 - $45,000
$45,000 - $60,000
$60,000 - $75,000
$75,000 - $90,000
$90,000 +

NP‘P'PP’N"

119

 

Appendix C
Interview 2: Details of Module 2

The purpose of Interview 2 is to investigate what the interviewee’s contemporary
experience was like in Module 2. The time allotted is between 60 and 90 minutes.

1. What was it like to be an Adult Studies student in Module 2?
2. In general, how would you describe (reconstruct) your experience in Module
3. In particular, how would you describe your experiences with the following:

“essence?

The first night of class

Any other class night

The individual conference with the instructor
The writing process

Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning
Library Research

Peer Review

Computer Technology

Relationships with advisor and instructor

4. What do you think about the time allotted for Module 2? Just right? Too much?
Too little? Explain.
5. Did you find the written materials helpful? If yes, how? If not or only somewhat,

why?

6. Did your library and computer skills change as a result of Module 2? If so, how?
Was this an important change for you? If so, why?
7. What was your topic for your Life Learning Paper topic?

A.

B.
C.
D

How did you decide on this topic?

Wlmt did you learn fiom revisiting that topic?

Have you applied that knowledge to other problems or issues in your
life? If so, how and why?

Would you say that writing your LLP could be related to any change
in your life? If so, how would you describe that change? What do you
do differently since taking Module 2? Do you think or feel differently
about situations or issues? If so, how?

8. How would you describe Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning to someone who

had never heard of it before?

A. When required to use it in Module 2, what was that like?

B. Have you used it since Module 2? If so, how and why?

C. Did you find it helpful in understanding how adults learn
experientially and how they have different learning styles? If so, did
that change your attitude about learning as an adult? If so, how would
you describe that change? Has it changed your behavior in any way?
If so, how?

D. Did you find it helpful in looking at situations or issues fiom different

perspectives as in the Reflective Observations mode of the model? If
so, was that a change for you? How would you describe that change?
Minor or major?

120

9. How did you learn in Module 2?

A.

B
C.
D.
B

When you were working on your paper at home, what was that like?

When in class, in your small group, working on your paper, what was

that like?

When working on your paper with the entire class, what was that like?

What was the one-on-one conference like?

If you were required to write a LLP on your experiences in Module 2,

what would your thesis statement be?

1. Have you applied these learning outcomes in other situations or
issues in your life?

2. Which part of Module 2 was most helpfirl or valuable? Least
helpfirl or valuable?

121

 

Appendix D

Interview 3: Reflection on the Meaning of the Experience

The purpose of Interview 3 is to put meaning to the experience(s) of Module 2. The
time allotted is between 60 minutes and 90 minutes.

1. Given what you have said about your life before you became a student at CC and
given what you said about your experience in Module, how do you understand
this experience in your life?

A. What sense do you make of Module 2?

B. Would you say that you were changed in any way? If so, how would
you describe that change? If not, why?

C. What does it mean to you for having participated in Module 2?

l.
2.

6.
7. How would you describe Module 2 to someone who was

8.

Did you feel more confident as a student?
Do you have more confidence in your ability to think, write, and
learn?

3. Has your self-image changed? If so, how?
4.
5. Have you applied what you learmd in Module 2 to the modules

Has your attitude about writing changed? If so, how?

following it? If so, what or how have you applied that knowledge?
Would you recommend Module 2 to other students?

unfamiliar with it?
How did you feel the first night of Module 2? By Week 11,
academic planning night?

2. Other follow-up questions will be based on the data that is collected fiom the
other two interviews and on areas that need to be probed based on the research
problem and analytical fiamework of the study.

3. Although these protocols look like three separate interviews, the researcher is
aware that not only the primary research question, but also flexibility and
discernment in the interview process drive a study. An honest attempt will be
made to follow this schedule whether it occurs in one, two, or three separate

interviews.

122

 

Appendix E
Participants’ Profiles

123

 

Appendix E
Participants’ Profiles

Ariel

Before coming to Covenant College, ArieL 46, confessed that she had been in
a cycle of "always doing the same things and getting the same results." This cycle
could also be called marriage and divorce-three each over about a 20 year period.
From each of the first two marriages, Ariel had two sons, 22 and 12 years old.

Despite the break up of her last marriage after only five months and with no
substantial income at the time, Ariel was able to keep the unfinished house that she
and her third husband had started. One of her resources was to reopen her day care
business. For many years Ariel Ind been a day care provider and voted Day Care
Provider of the Year by the local Chamber of Commerce.

By resuming that business and finishing the house one project at a time, she
has been able to live there with her two boys. Although Ariel was engaged again at
the time of the interview, she said that she was in no hurry to get married. Her
fiancee had also been married three times, and she said, "[I am] very, very cautious
[about getting married again]."

Even with her nnny disappointments and set backs in love and marriage,
Ariel seemed to have a positive, inspirational attitude about life and its hard lessons:
I've always said even when I was on a plane coming back [from CA to MT], leaving
my [first] alcoholic husband . . . I can remember saying a prayer to God and saying
thank you so much for having me go through this adversity because I would have
never known what alcoholism was. And I felt that I had grown. . . . I wouldn't trade

it for anything because I feel like I've grown . . .

I24

 

In large measure with no clear goal in mind other than “to get out of day
care,” her love and appreciation for learning seemed to be what brought Ariel to
Covenant College. Having attended three different colleges or universities, Ariel had
this to say about higher education: Well, I think no matter where I [have gone], it's
always provided for me an outlet to feel good about myself . . . something I could
accomplish. So it always makes me feel good I like the environment of learning, and
. . . this time going to Convenient College, I'm taking . . . a [family life education]
program. . . [I] can define [my] own life [experiences] that [I’m] learning, so it's kind
of a double plus. Furthermore, when she does make a career move, Ariel said that “it
[had] to be a helping field.” She also liked the idea of getting her master’s degree. “I
think there would be more doors open, maybe a better pay scale, and maybe more
fieedom. . . [more] flexible hom's. . . . Right now. . . I’m little bit spoiled [with day
care].”

Finally, as with the other adult students in the study, Ariel was also as active
as she felt she could be in her community, particularly her church. "I try to
participate when I can at church, and it's just small [things], cleaning up or whatever
and doing yard work. . . . I feel like my time, especially being a single mom, is very
valuable to my family, and I just feel a need to be home. One night of school a week
is plenty. . .," she said. -

Bobbi

Bobbi was a 38-year-old, stay-at-home wife and mother. Her husband, 40,

was a former police officer. At the time of the interview, he was an insurance

investigator. They lmd two children--a twelve-year-old boy from Bobbi’s first

125

 

marriage and a seven-year-old girl fi'om her current marriage. The family lived in a
four-year-old development outside of a small town in south central Michigan. Bobbi
was the only participant to be interviewed in her home. The other interviews
occurred at the college’s off-campus sites.

Bobbi had a rather unusual work history. She was a retired Michigan State
Police Officer. For twelve years she had worked in her home town in southwest
Michigan. The previous five years she had been a county sheriff dispatcher.
Although both her brother and father, a retired police chief, worked for the local
police department, Bobbi had had no intentions of becoming a “cop.” Yet the sheriff
unintentionally spurred her on, according to Bobbi, by stating that ‘Vvomen had no
place on the road” and by not letting her “ride with the guys” or do anything else
besides dispatch. She reported that she said, “Women can go places,” and promptly
applied to the Michigan State Police Academy. That was in 1987. After being
accepted into the academy, Bobbi endured 17 weeks of rnilitary-styled training. She
recalled that 130 cadets started the program, but only 79 graduated. Bobbi was one of
29 out of 31 women who graduated.

Eventually Bobbi said that she began to investigate more and more of the
child abuse cases that occurred within the two southwest Michigan counties in which
she worked. She said that she started when the post’s juvenile youth officer, who had
a “catch-all” type of position and was doing the CSCs (criminal sexual conduct
cases), reached the point of “real burn out.” Gradually Bobbi’s caseload climbed to

over 300 CSCs.

126

 

Bobbi said that she became good at her job, particularly interviewing
allegedly abused children, not only because of trial experience, but also because of
the inspiration of two women. In particular, she met one of these women through the
Michigan district court system. She was a counselor and expert witness in cases
involving child abuse. Bobbi acknowledged that “[this woman] was a real
inspiration and still is to me. That’s what I want to do. 1 want to work with these
kids and help these kids who have been abused to deal with that [trauma and the court
system].”

Not only this woman, but also her own children inspired Bobbi to return to
school to prepare for a career transition from police work into social work. She
explained, “With criminal [work] . . . you’re having to track [the suspects] down at
their houses, and, I mean, it’s a real dangerous situation. . . . [I]n police work things
change after you have your own children, where 1 would take a lot higher risk
[before] I had my own kids. . . .” So in 1998 Bobbi retired fiom the state police to
become a full-time wife and mother. But 18 months later she admitted that she felt as
if she was “losing something.” She described this uneasy feeling as “just like I was . .
. spacier (sic), like I wasn’t using my brain . . .” As a result of not “being mentally
challenged anymore,” Bobbi returned to a regional public university, which she said
restored her “self-confidence.” Yet she was dissatisfied with its academic program.
So in the fall 2001, Bobbi applied and was accepted into Covenant College’s Adult
Studies Program. With the intention of becoming a social worker, she chose the

Family Life Education major. At the time of the interview, she was leading the life of

127

 

a typical adult college student; she was active not only in school, but also with her
family, work, and community.
Cheri

Because of her father’s alcoholism and drug addiction, Cheri, 36, described
herself as a member of a “dysfunctional family.” She also acknowledged that her
father played a part in her enlistment in the Marine Corp. Her story was similar to
Bobbi’s. Whereas a sheriffs gender biased remark about “women having no place on
the road” inspired Bobbi to enlist in the state police academy, Cheri’s father’s
derisive laugh and look of “there is no way that you could ever make it” pushed her
into enlisting in the Marine Corps. From that time, 1985, when she was only 18 years
old, until about 1989, Cheri reported that she continued to live recklessly and
stubbornly. Then, at the age of about 22, she found herself in a military brig or jail.
Three months later, she was transported to Leavenworth Military Prison, where she
spent 18 months for embezzlement. In 1991 she was dishonorably discharged fiom
the Marines, having fulfilled her six-year commitment.

At first, despite partying every night and going into work many days “still
drunk,” Cheri held a responsible position as a sergeant in what should have been a
captain’s billet or position. She explained, “Experience, schooling, it should have
been a captain. They felt that I had the intelligence, the drive to fill it.” Cheri was in
charge of the food catering for all the parties on the base such as “mixers” and
graduation dinners. She also “worked for the chow hall too.” Consequently she had

access to a budget fiom which she withdrew “several large chunks at a time.”

128

 

it.

As her life unraveled, mostly because of her excessive drinking, fi‘equent
sexual encounters, and an abusive marriage, Cheri blamed the Marine Corp. “And
during this time 1 had a captain that said, ‘Well, I think you just want to stay married
to him.’ And it really hurt me. . . . I just completely shut down. And when I did that, I
decided to hurt the Marine Corp, and I stole $10,000.”

In military prison Cheri’s thinking made a significant and profound turn

 

around. She stopped blaming the military and others for her situation and

unhappiness and for the first time in her life put the blame squarely on herself. “At

 

that point I—well, coming into prison 1 was scared. And I decided eventually that I
had to be taken to rock bottom because while I was sitting there, I had come to the
point that I had decided that, okay, I am a strong person. I can run my life. And then I
was sitting in jail going, yeah, dummy, look what you did with your life,” she said.

At that point Cheri said that she gave up trying to control her life and turned to

 

a Higher Power to help her get through her prison experience. While I was sitting in
jail, I turned around, and I knew that I was lousy at running my life; knowing Christ, I
finally decided right [there], I am going to give it to [Him]. And throughout that
[prisonexperience] aplancamethat I wantedto goto school. And ifit meantthatl
hadtoexposemypasttoothemasashamedofitaslam,thensobeit.AtthetimeI
knew I wanted to work with people that were hurting. And so I turned around, and
coming out of prison, I already knew my [firture] husband. (They had met “out in the
yard and in the galley” in the brig. He was there for writing bad checks.) We got

married a week after I got out,” Cheri explained. Immediately upon her release from

129

prison, she went to meet her firture husband, who had been released earlier and had
gone back to his home town in Michigan.

At the time of the interview, they had been married fOr 11 years. Although
Cheri and her husband have no children, she said that she tells people that she has
four—three dogs and a husband.

Immediately after arriving in Michigan, Cheri enrolled in a local community

 

college. But because money was tight and they needed to buy large items such as a

new car, she ended up working full time in the quality control area of a local factory.

 

Then, two years ago Cheri and her husband had become very active in a local church.
Both took on leadership roles; he as the men’s minister and she as the youth minister.
At that time, Cheri said that she felt as if she had been “called” to that ministry and
tlmt is when she decided to earnestly pursue her college education.

That track was what brought Cheri to Covenant College. She said that she
enrolled in CC “because [she] wanted to complete [her] bachelor’s [degree] and . . .

needed a school that was a Wesleyan tradition . . . [and had] classes to coordinate

 

with the Nazarene system [of] ordination.” Yet she has no plans to attend seminary.
Instead she will be ordained through the home study program ofl‘ered by the Nazarene
church, which she plans to complete at the same time as her bachelor’s degree in
Family Life Education in October 2003. With her college degree Cheri hopes to “. . .
be the best youth pastor that I can be. Well, actually I will probably go for my Master
of Counseling, so that I will be able to fall back on counseling.”

Besides school and her youth work, Cheri said that she was recently asked to

serve on the Christian Athletes Fellowship Board. She said that she would probably

130

accept that responsibility because “[teenagers] are totally out of it. They don’t do
anything. Their eating is atrocious. The idea of working out just doesn’t fit [in their
lifestyle]. . . . And then I think people need to see that you can be an athlete and you
don’t have swearing up a storm . . . or drink or. . . drugs.”
Fahh

According to Faith, she had conre to Covenant College looking to complete a
bachelor’s degree in a hurry. She already had an associate’s degree in Applied
Science and was a certified physical therapist assistant. Because she liked the work
so much, she decided to become a fill fledged physical therapist, whose credentials
require both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. She had already found a master’s
program that she wanted to attend at a regional college and was looking for a
bachelor’s program that she could “get . . . in and get . . . out.”

After hearing about the college on the car radio, Faith called and set up a

meeting with an admission specialist. According to Faith, at that meeting she told the

admission specialist, “I’ll be fast, you know. . . . I’ve got to get a bachelor’s degree
and I’ve gotto get it fist. . .. And I like this [Management in Organizational
Development major]; [it] is really interesting . . . [and giving] me a lot of insight
[into] how businesses are nm and how management works and companies are
organized. I think I’ll do really well when I get my master’s degree and I’m a
physical therapist; if I ever go into management or. . . decide to open my own
business . . . 1 think it will be an excellent background,” she concluded.
Nevertheless, Faith considered herself the “odd man” in her cohort. “I think

God said, ‘Okay, you don’t know this yet, but I’m sending you here, and this is going

131

[V‘-

 

 

to be something that is going to help you in the long run’ I really do believe that
because He makes things happen,” she said.

Having recently had a baby, Faith was a stay-at-home' mother at the time of
the interview. She also substituted very infrequently, according to her, for other
PTAs at two home health care companies. “[My husband’s and my] plan is 1 will go

to school, and when I graduate, [he is] going to retire [fiom a private postal service

 

company] because I want to work. I love being a PT. I love working with patients.
It’s a passion that I have. I really enjoy it. . . . A patient comes in and [he] can’t even
walk, and after six weeks of working with this patient, three days a week, [he’s]
walking pain fiee. It is because I’ve helped [him],” said Faith.

She also said that “doing college” was important as an example for her
children. Besides her six-month-old baby girl, Faith has two boys fi'om her first
seven-year marriage--a fourteen-year-old, who would soon be leaving to live with his
father in a southern state, and a lZ-year-old. “I should have [gone] to college when I
got out of high school, but I didn’t know any better. My mother . . . went to college,
but [she] never told us you need to go to college . . . . That’s really important for you.
And so I didn’t go. . . . I had no clue.”

At 18, having graduated fiom high school and wanting “out of [her] mother’s
house,” Faith confessed that she married a man “very similar to what my mother had
married. Ihadmarriedmy fatherbasically. Imarriedabum. . .. Iwasalwaysthe
one whohadajob. Iwasalwaysworking 40 hoursaweek. Andso . . . whenl
thought he was at work, he wasn’t at work. I thought he had a job, he didn’t have a

job.” He was also seven years older than she was. Yet because of her religious

132

convictions, Faith had remained committed to her vows. Then after her second child
was born, she discovered that her husband had been unfaithful to her. So she
divorced him.

At 35, Faith was again married to a man seven years her senior. They had
also been married for seven years. For four years the family lived on the south side of
a large metropolitan area in south central Michigan. Then three years ago they
moved to a small town not too fir fiom that city. Faith described it as “a great
community” that “stayed together and supported one another.” Most likely because
of her busy schedule, Faith mentioned no other community involvement. She also
never offered whether she attended any place of worship. However, she did mention
that she had been baptized only a year ago and that she attended a women’s Bible
study

John

Although the only man in this study, John’s story of how he found his way to
Covenant College had a firniliar ring to it. After graduating fi'om high school in
1985, he too somehow deviated fi-om his life and career plans. He started at [the local
community college] and attended for three years, “having anticipated becoming a
packaging major at [the regional public university].” However, when he fiiled
Physics twice, John realized that he ‘Vvas not going to be able to be a packaging
engineer.” He described that time as “very stressful.” He added, “. . . I lost my way
and decided that I wasn’t going to get into packaging. Therefore, I didn’t know what
I wanted to do, so I quit college.” At the same time his girlfriend, who would

eventually beconre his wife, ‘ans in dental hygiene . . . and decided that [profession]

133

I
.1.
s

 

 

wasn’t what she wanted to do, so we did what any confused 21- or 22-year-old kids
would do and got married.” Since 1988 John and his wife have been married, and
they have two children-a six-year-old daughter and a twelve-year-old son.

After 14 years John called the experience of coming back to school in 2001
“very humbling.” He explained, “[Literally] when I wrote papers for writing classes
at [the local community college], I really wrote papers with real live pen on paper,
and now you come into the computer technology. And it’s sort of a wake up call.
I’m learning as 1 go.”

Although he stated it somewhat differently from the women in the study,
John’s motivation for returning to school came from the value that he placed in higher
education. He said, “. . . realizing that [college] was something that I never
completed, and I think that there’s always that inkling in the back of your mind of
inferiority because other people have degrees. No matter [whether] you know that to
be [the] contrary, you always have this nagging feeling that they’re smarter than
you.” Furthermore, John, 35, said that his “work is very, very stressful, [and] to
move on, even in sales, you often have to have a degree. Your experiences aren’t
going to matter. Even though I’m good at what I do, they’re going to say, ‘Where’s
your degree?” Since he quit college, according to John, he as been in sales. First, he
sold retail jewelry items for four years and then commercial printing services for ten
years.

John admitted that he chose Covenant College Adult Studies Program in order
to get a bachelor’s degree as quickly as possible. But then he said that he had been

pleasantly surprised” by ‘fivhat the [Management of Organizational Development

134

 

 

 

major] really [meant] and what it could mean to my future. . . . This ability to really
attach a name to what I’ve always thought, the ability to analyze things, figure out
what’s wrong with them, implement change, all the things tlmt I can’t do where I’m
at, so it surprised me in a good way that I think it may well become my career. . .”

John mentioned that he had applied at only one other company for the position
of director of sales and client services. However, he was turned down because of his
lack of management experience. “But,” he said, “that was just preliminary and that’s
my frustration. I enjoy what I do. I like my clients a lot. I’m just not happy with the
day-to—day operations, and I think we have some ‘system fit’ problems, as we would
say in MOD, and I can’t fix them.” John said that with his bachelor’s degree he
hopes to be in a position where he can not only recognize what is not working, but
also “shape policies or situations” that will fix the company.

Yet John explained that more than career ambitions brought him to Covenant
College. It was a potentially fatal car accident in which a young boy, while crossing a
busy intersection, was hit but not seriously injured. John summed up that event as
“the moment,” “the life-altering experience” when he realized that he had “a lot of
needto learn.” Heexplainedthathadbeensitting ataredlightandwitnessedthe boy
fly up into the air and land on the ground. After calling 911 on his cell phone, John
assisted at the scene until the police arrived. Then he said that he “started driving
home and . . . lost it. I couldn’t tell you the last time I shed a tear for anything in my
life. And I just flat out lost it. [I] picked up my son from day care, and. . . I’m trying

to talk to them about it. Are you teaching my kid safety and road crossing? And [I’m]

135

 

[7i

 

 

balling. I can say that was probably that one event that clicked in my mind as the
moment at which I really started evaluating life.”

Following that event some “religious things” happened in his life, according
to John. For instance, when a client said that he would pray for John, he was “just
floored” because he “had never heard of people doing that” for each other. “So,” he
concluded, “when I’ve had those kinds of events . . . leading me along, and after I’ve
chosen to go ahead [and return to school] . . . when I was at a Christian college, I kind
of smiled to myselfthat maybe it wasn’t quite an accident that I ended up here. . . . I
don’t know if I’m worthy of saying that I’ve been ‘called.’ I just feel it’s the right
place to be, so I’ll take it for that.”

Unlike the women in the study, John had several hobbies, including collecting
hand guns, fishing, and hunting. For relaxation and release fiom stress, John said that
he goes to the shooting range for an hour or so. But bass fishing apparently held a
special meaning in his life. He called the sport’s opening day a “religious holiday.”

John described the small town in which his family lived as the “kind of
environment” in which “half the neighbors don’t even lock their houses . . . . Kids
[are] everywhere, and there are a lot of people our age.” Furthermore, the entire
family was “very involved in sports.” In addition to his finrily’s activities, John was
active in his church and a local Toast Masters, where he had recently won “Rookie of
the Year.” At the time of the interview, he had been thinking about volunteering as a
liturgical minister and as next year’s club president.

Jan

136

 

fl

 

Although she had several reasons for returning to school, the bottom line for
Jan, 44, was preparing for her retirement from a large automobile manufacturer. She
explained, “. . . I can retire in six years, and I’m driving [fiom my hometown] to [the
city of the manufacturer] every day, so if 1 have a bachelor’s degree, I’m more likely
to find another job [here at home] when I retire. Because I have a two year old at
home . . . I’m going to have to work until I’m 62 or 65 years 01 .”

In the meantime, because their son was a “surprise” and they did not want him
in day care, Jan’s husband, 44, retired from drywall installation to stay home full time
with him. Because they had purchased her fimily’s firmhouse, the couple also did
not want to move closer to Jan’s workplace. “So,” Jan concluded. “I’m making the
sacrifice of doing that [commuting], and [my husband] is doing the sacrifice of . . .”
Jan was unsure of what “sacrifices” her husband was making. Nonetheless, they did
appear to have an tmconventional lifestyle.

That lifestyle had begun almost three years before as a result of Jan
unexpectedly finding herself expecting. “Yeah . . . I never thought I could have kids.
In fact, I was almost seven months [pregnant] before I realized I was pregnant.”
During her first 10-year marriage she “had gone through so much fertility stuff”
without success. So during those seven months Jan thought that she was only “going
through [her] change of life.”

Besides her son, Jan had two adult step children from her husband’s previous
marriage and two grandchildren. Although her basic reason for returning to school
was to prepare for a career move, Jan said that she “always wanted to have a

bachelor’s degree at least.” She mentioned that she already had five associate’s

137

 

 

 

degrees, beginning with law enforcement and business, then design and drafting, and
also general education. The last three, according to Jan, were related to her work at
the automobile manufacturer. The first two resulted from her plan to be a police
officer. However, because she was “always scared to go to the [regional public
university] . . . to park,” Jan never completed a bachelor’s degree. Yet, she said, “. . .
when you get forced fiom work--they’re saying you have to go--it kind of puts the
fire underneath your feet, and you just go.”

The pressure fiom work had resulted fi'om the automobile manufacturer’s
attempt to combine its design and engineering departments, according to Jan. “I’m a
designer and have been a designer for ten years. And then they combined the design
and engineering together, and engineers have to go back and learn the Unigraphics,
which is the computer system that we use, and the designers have to take some
engineering classes. But if you have a four-year degree, you only have to take like
two engineering classes. So it’s a better way to go, whereas other designers that take
engineering classes . . . don’t get a degree; they get a certificate that’s only good at
[the automobile manufacturer]. And I didn’t want to do that because [of my
retirement plans].”

Over the 23 years that she had been at the automobile manuficturer, Jan’s job
title had changed several times; she was currently called a “designer engineer.” She
explained that people in that position made “[car] parts on a computer, simply.” As a
result of her law enforcement degree, Jan had started at the automobile manufacturer
as a security guard. When the manufacturer went to private security, Jan decided to

take a “very competitive” test for designers and passed it. Then for the next two

138

 

 

years she attended a design engineering program at a community college near the
plant. “You had a gun to your head; you had to keep a “B” average. It was very
stressful. . . . And so I did that and that’s how I became a designer, which really isn’t
my passion. My second life I’ll come back as a police officer or a nurse. I like that
kind of person. I’m not a sit-in-front-of-the-computer [person]. I used to be so thin. .
. . But it doesn’t do any good to complain. I mean, there are parts of the job that I
like. When I was in “Help Control” actually. I’m just a help [to new employees]. I
have the nickname “Mom” at work.” When she does retire, Jan said that she hopes to
get a position at a local insurance company either in Human Resources or sales.

Although her job title or duties had changed regularly, Jan’s living
arrangements seemed steadier. For instance, she and her husband had recently
purchased her fimily’s firmhouse with a three-acre lot that was part of the original
140-acre fimily farm. Until the recent death of her bother, it had been in the fimily
since 1933. The firmhouse had been built in 1900, according to Jan. Because the
decedents of her fither’s two brothers own much larger firms (thousands of acres) on
either side of her property, Jan said that she is surrounded by family. At the time of
the interview, they were planning a paternal fimily reunion later that year in which
she anticipated over 100 attendees. Jan herselfhad nine siblings.

Because she was no longer practicing her Catholic religion, Jan said that she
“switched to the Methodist religion.” However, she admitted, “I’m not really
practicing that hard. I’m going to do it more when my son gets bigger. I’m more
spiritual.” Someday she hoped to get more involved with the “little things,” as her

mother-in-law is.

139

Appendix F
Summary of Phases, Themes, or Set of Activities
of Writing Module Identified by Participants

140

 

 

 

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141

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142

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