Wednesday, February 11th, 2009...8:29 am
Curriculum of Alienation?
For the past three weeks, I’ve found myself not looking forward to my Adult Development class. In fact, I’ve been experiencing stress about going to the class. Before we met last night, the feelings were strong. Being the reflective learner that I’ve become, I made a point to pay particular attention in class and track my feelings so that I might be able to find a trend… and I did.
Communicating these trends comes only after much self debate. Will I sound like a whiner? Will I be further labeling myself and thus potentially alienating myself? One might further think this sense of alienation has to do with my fast approaching 40th birthday and being in the midst of one of life’s transitions, and although these things are a reality, I do not attribute these feelings to those factors. I will thus risk further alienating myself, and I say further because the feeling of alienation is one of the co-contributing feelings that is the impetus of this reflection. As a GLBT person, I feel alienated by the curriculum being delivered in the course.
The field of adult development is a relatively young field and progress in GLBT rights and the GLBT ‘movement’ is also relatively young. Thus, I do understand why there may be a gap in the theories and amount of research of adult development to account for how the development of adult GLBT persons differs from that of adultheterosexual persons. I say ‘may be a gap’ because I am not a scholar in this field, nor do I purport to know how much researched exists, but I do know that some does and I do however know what is and is not being taught to me and how the gap in that information is leaving me feeling alienated.
Life cycles, life transitions, stressors, the effect of losing a ‘spouse’ or child, ‘normal relationship patterns and growth’, marriage, the U shape curve of a normal marriage as is relates the development of relationships, honeymoons, traditional rights of passage, career development, societal hurdles to development, religion, social roles, social norms.. regardless of the factor, the differences are pervasive in the path of Adult Development for a GLBT person.
1 Comment
February 15th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Hi, Ed,
One of the alternatives to alienation is the option of sharing your thoughts and perspectives with your classmates and the professor (which, to some extent you have certainly done with this post for those that read it): I suspect their lack of attention to issues that you find pertinent in adult development has not been intentionally one-sided towards a traditional heterosexual orientation, but simply limited by their own field of vision. Each of us understands development from the perspective of our “self.”
I have seen some excellent adult development literature that expressedly deals with GLBT identity development, particularly articles by Kathleen King on transformative learning and identity development, Annie Brooks (who also writes from a gay-lesbian perspective on adult development and transformative learning), and others, including Elizabeth Tisdell, a well known scholar in adult education who writes from a feminist perspective.
I searched the journal New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education (one of my favorite adult ed journals that is heavily oriented towards adult development issues) through our VCU library database just a few minutes ago and came up with several articles in the December 2006 issue (number 112), which is devoted to just this topic. I’m sure there are many others, and I encourage you to use this class experience to explore your own orientation to adult development through the scholarly literature, comparing and contrasting your experience with what gay and lesbian writers in the field say. No doubt you could enlighten the course with an alternative perspective. My guess is that your classmates and professor would be open to a discussion of this literature, since some may not even know it is out there. Two articles stand out for me in this issue: one entitled “Difficult Dilemmas: The Meaning and Dynamics of Being Out in the Classroom” by Thomas Bettinger, Rebecca Timmons, and Elizabeth Tisdell, and in the same issue, “A transformative learning perspective of continuing sexual identity development in the workplace” by Kathleen King and Susan Biro.
Even if you decide not to share your readings, you can at least approach the study of adult development knowing that there are others who write from this perspective and have something for you to consider.
This is a great course for you to be reflective in and about … I hope you will make the most of it for your own benefit and for others, as well!
Thanks for sharing this post. Terry Carter
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