Abstract

This research aims to investigate how adult learners’ experiences of college-based literacy learning, in relation to their own knowledge and experiences, can inform the development of curriculum tasks for Functional Skills English, taking a social practice approach. To achieve this, I seek to investigate how could using stories of experience and learners’ own aspirations help curriculum development for adult literacy learners and what do learners’ stories of experience tell us about their progress. Finally, I seek to investigate how this work inform our constructions of self.
To answer these questions, this thesis is qualitative, using an interpretative approach to an ethnographic inquiry, exploring my own practice. I have also described it as action research in nature, as it seeks to identify solutions to a specified problem: how can curriculum tasks be adapted, considering the problem of disconnect. To achieve this, narrative inquiry has been employed to draw on learners’ and colleagues’ stories of experience, which creates a double hermeneutic because it not only seeks to answer the research questions but to also create suitable curriculum tasks, which shape learners’ meaning-making.

This is achieved through collecting data from curriculum tasks, including the initial assessment task, written curriculum tasks, and the speaking and listening summative assessment. Data has also been collected through focus group conversations, through my own field journal documenting classroom discussions and staff discussions, and through interview conversations with a colleague. To analyse the data generated, I identify Reflexive Thematic Analysis, in the style of Braun and Clarke (2006; 2022), to ensure a reflexive approach, which is important to allow opportunities for action and change (Usher, 1996).

The social practice approach takes account of who the learners are, incorporating motivations and aspirations for learning, allowing the programme to be designed appropriately. It also accounts for the importance of female adult learners’ roles as mothers and carers. Developing curriculum tasks which enabled learners to write from their own experience enables scaffolded learning to learn new ways of writing, whilst removing a significant learning burden. When adult learners feel successful in their learning this builds their confidence, thereby increasing the likelihood of progress and success. It also gives adult learners the opportunity to restory themselves, changing their internal narratives of who they are as learners, therefore impacting how we construct ourselves.