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Attending to resistance: an ethnographic study of resistance and attendance in an adult basic education classroom Pare, Arleen Lyda
Abstract
This ethnographic study explores the relationship between student attendance and student resistance in an Adult Basic Education (ABE) classroom. Resistance is interpreted to mean the positive opposition to dominant cultures and discourses (of which schooling and literacy are a part), as is described in the work of Henri Giroux. The study was conducted in a community college Fundamental ABE classroom. It documents and describes instances of student resistance that were gathered through three and a half months of videotaped observation and twelve interviews. The initial question focused on how ABE students, who generally have marginalized identities, managed to remain in ABE programs despite literacy’s almost inherent thrust toward standardization and the mainstream. As I pursued the relevant literature and reviewed the data, the theoretical concept of resistance began to influence the research question, so that it finally became “What is the relationship of student resistance to student attendance in an ABE classroom.” In the data that I gathered, resistance presented as a complex phenomenon that could be divided most usefully into five different categories. Comparisons of student resistance categories with student attendance patterns suggested that students with more, and more varied, resistance styles were the students who attended most regularly. Most of the students who attended sporadically or who dropped out of the ABE program either demonstrated no resistance, very little resistance, or only the type of resistance that I categorized as the withdrawal type of resistance. These comparisons imply that ABE teachers and programs could benefit from framing their experience of student resistance as a positive, political phenomenon to be recognized, valued, encouraged and worked with (not against) in ABE settings. Further it suggests that encouraging students with withdrawal type resistance to resist in other styles might also encourage them to keep attending.
Item Metadata
Title |
Attending to resistance: an ethnographic study of resistance and attendance in an adult basic education classroom
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Creator | |
Publisher |
University of British Columbia
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Date Issued |
1994
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Description |
This ethnographic study explores the relationship between student attendance and
student resistance in an Adult Basic Education (ABE) classroom. Resistance is interpreted to
mean the positive opposition to dominant cultures and discourses (of which schooling and
literacy are a part), as is described in the work of Henri Giroux. The study was conducted in
a community college Fundamental ABE classroom. It documents and describes instances of
student resistance that were gathered through three and a half months of videotaped
observation and twelve interviews. The initial question focused on how ABE students, who
generally have marginalized identities, managed to remain in ABE programs despite
literacy’s almost inherent thrust toward standardization and the mainstream. As I pursued the
relevant literature and reviewed the data, the theoretical concept of resistance began to
influence the research question, so that it finally became “What is the relationship of student
resistance to student attendance in an ABE classroom.”
In the data that I gathered, resistance presented as a complex phenomenon that could
be divided most usefully into five different categories. Comparisons of student resistance
categories with student attendance patterns suggested that students with more, and more
varied, resistance styles were the students who attended most regularly. Most of the students
who attended sporadically or who dropped out of the ABE program either demonstrated no
resistance, very little resistance, or only the type of resistance that I categorized as the
withdrawal type of resistance. These comparisons imply that ABE teachers and programs could benefit from framing
their experience of student resistance as a positive, political phenomenon to be recognized,
valued, encouraged and worked with (not against) in ABE settings. Further it suggests that
encouraging students with withdrawal type resistance to resist in other styles might also
encourage them to keep attending.
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Extent |
2007701 bytes
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Genre | |
Type | |
File Format |
application/pdf
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Language |
eng
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Date Available |
2009-03-04
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0064484
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URI | |
Degree | |
Program | |
Affiliation | |
Degree Grantor |
University of British Columbia
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Graduation Date |
1994-11
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Campus | |
Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.