Journal of Literacy Research

Journal ofhttp://jlr.sagepub.com/ Literacy Research

Conversational Asides: The Social Context of an Adult Literacy Class Peter Mcdermott Journal of Literacy Research 1982 14: 461 DOI: 10.1080/10862968209547470 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/14/4/461

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Journal of Reading Behavior 1982, Volume XIV, No. 4

CONVERSATIONAL ASIDES: THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF AN ADULT LITERACY CLASS

Peter McDermott State University of New York at Albany, Department of Reading, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222

Results from recent anthropological and sociolinguistic research have demonstrated that social context is a pervasive force often influencing the success or failure of learning activities. Classroom lessons, testing situations, and counselling encounters are influenced by the social structure, the interactional displays, and the social assumptions of students, teachers and guidance counselors as they engage in school activities (McDermott, 1977; Mehan, 1978; MacKay, 1974; Cicourel and Kituse, 1963; Erickson, 1975). Research has indicated that children modify their replies to classroom questions according to the degree of formality in the situation (Hall, Cole, Reder and Dowling, 1977), the social identity of the questioner (Mishler, 1978), and the ways in which questions are posed (Mehan, 1979). Adult educators, sensitive to adult students' fears about returning to school, have long maintained that social context is of ultimate importance in adult education programs. Knowles (1970) reasoned that because of adults' ages and maturity, teachers need to interact with their adult students in markedly different ways than is practiced in the elementary or secondary schools. In a political perspective, Friere (1970) argued that adult educators must adopt instructional practices which allow for "authentic dialogue" between teachers and students as equally knowing subjects. Recently, Lovell (1980) explained that if adults were reminded of the characteristics they disliked about school all their old antipathies and anxieties would be aroused, making learning difficult if not impossible to accomplish. And in a widely publicized study, which again identified the importance of social context upon adult learning, Hunter and Harmon (1979) argued that current literacy programs in the United States have been unsuccessful in reaching the adults most in need of reading instruction because the programs

A paper prepared for the Third Annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum, March 1982, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. Downloaded from jlr.sagepub.com by guest on August 13, 2012

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Journal of Reading Behavior

have simply perpetuated the social structures and learning contexts already found in the elementary and secondary schools. Although the effects of social context upon children's performance has by now been well documented in research literature, and while adult educators have repeatedly identified the importance of social context upon adult learning, there has been an absence of research which describes the social context of any adult education program. In the report which follows, the social contexts of one adult literacy class, as revealed by analyzing the students' and teacher's side-conversations, are described and explained. Three social contexts are identified, each distinguished from the others by the ways they classroom members conduct their asides. METHOD AND PROCEDURES The qualitative research paradigm was selected for this study because of its appropriateness to the study's descriptive and explanatory purposes. One adult literacy class was selected for the study and was examined for a five and a half month period of time. Several sources of data, transcripts made from audio recordings of participants' verbal interaction, field notes taken through a participant observation research strategy, structured and unstructured interviews with the classroom members, and specimen records from the classroom teacher were collected and analyzed. The researcher sought to obtain a descriptively valid account of the social context of a single adult literacy class and did not intend to generalize to other reading programs or educational contexts. The source of data for this study was an adult literacy class in an upstate New York adult learning center. The study occurred over a five and a half month period, from March 18 to September 4, 1980. Forty-five observational visits were made, and of these, twenty-five class sessions were recorded. This particular reading class was selected largely for theoretical reasons. The class was a beginning adult reading class with the students' level of literacy ranging from second to fourth grade level of achievement. The class contained students 18 to 60 years old, was multi-ethnic, and was taught by individual and group instruction. The teacher was experienced, having taught reading to adults for fifteen years and was considered to be a successful teacher by the school administrators. The field notes were written during each class visit and were organized in three ways. Descriptions of the members' interactional displays were recorded under "behavioral observations." The researcher's ongoing insights and selections on the observations were recorded under "theoretical notes." The third type of note-taking was "methodological" and these consisted of reminders to the researcher to observe and record information about particular activities during future visits. After each visit the notes were rewritten so that any incomplete observations could be filled in, the theoretical notes could be expanded, and the methodological notes could be incorporated into plans for future visits. The twenty-five different class sessions were audio recorded by using a small Bell and Howell portable cassette recorder with a built-in microphone. These recordings consisted of six 90-minute tapes of entire class sessions and nineteen 45-minute tapes which represented half sessions. The tape recorder was always placed on the teacher's desk, and with but a few Downloaded exceptions, quality recordings obtained. from jlr.sagepub.com by guest on Augustwere 13, 2012

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Interviews were also audio recorded. Three teacher interviews were conducted, each of which lasted for approximately forty-five minutes. Five students were interviewed and these interviews lasted about twenty minutes. The interviews were conducted so that the members' interpretations of classroom events could be obtained. Their interpretations were then compared with the researcher's analysis of the transcripts and field observations. These different sources of data functioned primarily to help the researcher obtain insights into the patterns of classroom behavior that could not have been obtained from one source alone. PRESENTATION OF DATA In all social interaction there is an ongoing activity that members have agreed, at least tacitly, to produce. And in most social encounters, except in the most formal, as in a presidential debate of university lecture, the members generate side-sequences (Jefferson, 1972). These asides function minimally as breaks in the ongoing activity. However, asides are neither haphazard nor random, but represent a purposeful activity that the members must cooperatively produce. Cooperation between members is essential because a successful aside requires the co-participants to appropriately interpret the ongoing activity so that they know when an aside may be generated, who may partake, what topics are allowed, and have a mutual understanding that the aside must eventually be terminated with a return to the ongoing activity. In this adult literacy class the members generated many conversational asides. The asides occurred between students, and between teacher and student(s). Their asides, particularly when generated between the teacher and students, provide evidence for a relaxed and informal social atmosphere, and their repeated interactional patterns for conducting their asides provide evidence for three distinct social contexts: •The Waiting Context •The Entry Context •The Instructional Context The first, the waiting context, consisted of the time the students were in the classroom before the teacher arrived. The second, the entry context, begins when the teacher enters the room, goes to her desk and records the attendance. The third is the instructional context and it is behaviorally marked from the previous context by the completion of attendance, and the initiation by one of the members, teacher or student, of a procedural or instructional issue. All three of the contexts are distinguished from each other by the ways the members inform each other as to what is going on. And except in instances of violation, the members do not make these contexts verbally explicit. Instead, the members inform each other in a tacit manner through an abundance of verbal and nonverbal cues as to what context they are in. A knowledge of these contexts is essential for each student, because only certain types of behaviors, and in this case asides, would be appropriate in each context. To interact appropriately, a member would need to first identify the context before initiating the aside. Downloaded from jlr.sagepub.com by guest on August 13, 2012

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The Waiting Context In the waiting context, most of the members have already entered, obtained their folders from the file cabinet, taken a seat, and some have begun to study. While waiting for the teacher to arrive, some have sodas, coffee and snacks. During this waiting context, the students frequently talk with one another. However, certain kinds of talk which are acceptable in this context would not be allowed in others. For example, asides that are loud or lengthy would later be considered a violation in another context; such asides almost always end in a voluntary manner. One day in the waiting context, Walter told the others at his rear study table that he was up most of the night at a party. He explained that he drank too much, slept little, and as he described it, "His head was just not with it today." Walter told this story in a loud voice so that even others on the other side of the room could hear it. Walter continued to tell more about the party when the teacher entered the room. As the teacher walked past Walter's table and up to her desk, Walter voluntarily ended his story (August 1). Just as certain types of talk are only appropriate in the waiting context, certain behaviors are also only appropriate in it. For example, there were two occasions when students brought radios into the classroom. Before the teacher arrived, the students played the radios, but when she entered and walked to her desk each student turned the radio off without any verbal directive from her. There were a few times when the students were involved in good natured joking and jostling of one another. Like the earlier aside and the radio playing, these behaviors also ended voluntarily as the teacher entered. In one instance the teacher walked into the room while two students were involved in horseplay. The teacher commented amusingly about it, but didn't direct the students to stop. By the time the attendance was completed, the play ended without any directive from her. This incident happened in the following way. Several students were seated at the tables before the teacher arrived. Tongee, who was one of these students, sat quietly at a front table. Another student, Tou, walked in a few minutes later, placed her books on the other front table, turned so that she faced Tongee, and shouted, "Come here!" Tongee responded, "No!" Tou then repeated in a louder voice, "Come here! Come here!," pointing to the table where she was standing. Each time Tou issued the command, Tongee responded more loudly, "No! No!," and finally said, "I'll sit here!" as she pointed to the table where she already sat. Then Tou walked over to Tongee's table, grabbed Tongee's books, and brought them over to the other table. Both of the students were now laughing as the teacher entered. When the teacher walked past Tongee, Tongee complained to her that Tou had taken her books. The teacher smiled and said, "Who? Come on, let's not act like little children!" Tou then mimicked the teacher by saying, "Come on." Next, Tou walked over to Tongee, pushed Tongee's table forward, leaned over and began to pick up Tongee. The teacher looked amused, laughed, and said, "I wouldn't do that if I were you Tou. If you break your back, it's your fault." Tou wasn't successful in lifting Tongee, but Tongee nevertheless obliged Tou by walking over and sitting at Tou's table. The teacher began marking the attendance folder and before she finished the students were quiet (June 11). The previous incident reveals that the boundary between contexts is not always discrete. Although there are always a multitude of behavioral cues that signal a change Downloaded from jlr.sagepub.com by guest on August 13, 2012


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in context, a new context isn't realized until the members orient themselves to that context. Thus, in a transitional segment, as in the case of Tou and Tongee's play, they displayed behaviors that were acceptable in the waiting context, and when the teacher arrived, they acknowledged her presence, but didn't immediately orient themselves to the next context. At the same time, the teacher acknowledged their play as being inappropriate in the new context by her utterance, "Let's not act like little children." Because the incident occurred during the moments of transition, Tongee and Tou's play was not a violation of social order. The Entry Context The second context, teacher entry, begins when the teacher arrives into the room. As the teacher enters, she greets the class by saying "Good morning" or "Hello." Walking to her desk, she often, particularly when the class is small, initiates a conversational aside with one of the students or sustains an aside that the students already initiated. On one morning (June 25) for example, she greeted Bill, who sat near the entrance to the room, by asking him how his trip to New York City had been. On another occasion (June 24), when the teacher entered, one of the students had just finished showing photographs to some of the other students. When the teacher noticed the photos she said, "Oh, pictures, may I see them?" The student then handed and described the subjects of each of the photos to her. On another day (May 2), when the teacher was walking to her desk, she explained to a student that the cake she held in her hand was given to her by a woman from East Pakistan. The students also initiated asides in the teacher entry context. For example, on one day (August 14), as the teacher walked up to the front of the room, Tongee said, "I have a surprise for you." The teacher stopped and asked what the student had. The student then gave her a bag of leaf lettuce from her garden. The teacher thanked Tongee and asked whether it should be placed in the refrigerator. After the teacher reaches her desk, she sits down, puts on her glasses, and records the day's attendance. She rarely calls the students' names but simply observes who is present and marks the attendance folder. While recording the attendance she often comments or initiates a brief aside with one of the students on that student's return to class or another's absence. For instance, when she noticed that Brenda returned to class (June 9) after several days of absence, she asked Brenda if she was successful in finding the larger apartment that she needed. On another day when she noticed that Tou was absent, she asked Tongee if she heard from Tou. Tongee explained that Tou called her last night and said that Tou planned to be in class today. One day when there were only a few students in class (May 2), the teacher remarked, "Urn, where is everybody?" She then looked up at the rear table and asked Don if Bill was here today. On a different day (June 11), when she noticed that two students weren't in class, she commented by saying that she thought she saw them in school that morning and wondered why they weren't in class. The Instructional Context The instructional context begins after the attendance is recorded, most of the students begin to study, and at least one student becomes involved in a procedural or inDownloaded from jlr.sagepub.com by guest on August 13, 2012

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structional discussion with the teacher. This context is unlike the previous contexts in two important ways. First, it is temporally defined as occupying nearly ninety minutes; consequently, the members' social relationships are thus held in this context longer than in the previous ones. Secondly, it is clearly defined in purpose; the instructional context is the reason the members assemble—each school day they gather for the purpose of reading instruction. The two factors of time and purpose influenced members' behaviors. Asides that were previously appropriate may now become inappropriate. And in this context, the members exhibited a different strategy for initiating their asides. The class members marked the instructional context by the ways they conducted their asides. Within this context asides of a personal nature would be considered secondary to the on-going activity of reading instruction. And because of this, personal asides would only be appropriate when the teacher, if co-participant, was not instructing other students. Consequently, the personal aside occurred less frequently than in the previous contexts, and when it did occur, it tended to occur when fewer members were in class. Since this type of aside was ancillary to the instructional activity, personal asides would also be terminated when an instructional or procedural need developed. Because the personal aside was less appropriate during the instructional context, the class members needed a way to continue their inter-personal activities. They accomplished this by utilizing a different discourse strategy for constructing asides—the topically related utterance. By linking their asides to previous instructional or procedural topics the members could then develop their discourse to other topical areas. This conversational strategy, the topically related utterance, represented a covert strategy which allowed side-sequences to develop and at the same time not violate the contextual maxim pertaining to the use of personal asides during instruction. Now the asides did more than just provide a break in the instructional activities. These members did not just construct asides for diversion. Their asides fulfilled several important functions: First, they functioned as a way the members could maintain, develop and construct their social relationships; Second, they functioned as a way in which the member's roles and identities, rights and obligations could be realized. The first aside to be presented in the instructional context is a personal aside. It is presented to show how a personal aside may be generated and closed. In this case, the student appropriately initiated the sequence with an informative utterance. And since the teacher was not instructing other students at that time, the utterance was socially appropriate and accepted. The acceptance by the teacher reveals the importance she places in establishing inter-personal relationships with her students. The closing of this aside also displays the effect of the instructional context, her role and identity upon the discourse; although the aside was appropriately initiated, it needed to be later returned to reading instruction. Finally, the closing of the aside displayed the inter-cooperation the members maintained; the aside was simply terminated by the teacher with the marker OK, and never needed to be more explicit. The behavioral background for this first personal aside (August 1) is as follows: The aside developed with the class was already in progress for thirty minutes, the teacher had just finished instructing a student at one of the rear tables. She walked back to her desk, stood behind it, and looked through some of the papers that were on top of it. At this point Walter walked up, placed his folder on her desk, put his foot on the chair adjacent to it and began by saying: Downloaded from jlr.sagepub.com by guest on August 13, 2012

Conversational Asides Walter: T: Walter: T: Walter: T: Walter: Walter cont.: T: Walter: T: Walter:

T: Walter: T: Walter: T:

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Muscles are sore in my arms. What were you doing that made your muscles sore? Em, I used a bat, we were playing in a Saturday afternoon picnic, all the whole family and everything. Em, eh Between all the little kids and the guys, we're playing softball, the score was like 25 to 12. (Walter laughs) Oh my goodness! Yeah (laughs), we romped them. They were getting mad at us, come on, now let us (laughs) I hit a four-run homer, bases were loaded, got up, hit. You hit a home run. So you did, ah, hit a four run homer, right? Yeah, it was great, it was, come on in, come on in. (laughs) So now you're paying for it, you're stiff. Oh, wow, my arm hurts, my legs don't hurt, but my arms are like really, they're hard to lift, the muscles are really stiff for some odd reason. That's the first time I played baseball in almost two years, three years. Em, you used muscles that you haven't used in a long time, right? Em, and they hurt. Yup (the teacher picks up Walter's work folder and begins to correct it). You don't get to use them much, and it felt good, too, running. OK, so that's right, sequence, right, good Walter, right, good Walter. OK, now what you're going to be doing here...

The teacher's role relationship with one of the students is revealed in this next example of a personal aside. In the example (June 9) the teacher's language is that of a parental or authority figure as she questioned the student about his behaviors. The structure of the discourse also reflects the same relationship; the teacher gained and maintained conversational control through a repeated questioning strategy. The segment illustrates the ancillary nature of the personal aside during the instructional context. The aside is terminated and then re-established three different times; the teacher and student cooperatively constructed the aside after each closing. The student reinitiated it the first time, the teacher re-established it after the second closing, and the student re-initiated it the final time. Importantly, the student and teacher accomplished its closing and return to instructional discourse tacitly, that is, the closing of the aside was never explicitly stated but every time another member had an instructional need, that need received priority and the aside was consequently closed. The interaction for this next aside occurred twenty minutes into the class. The teacher was in the rear of the room and she just finished helping Don with his assignment. As the teacher began to return to the front of the room, the aside began as follows: Downloaded from jlr.sagepub.com by guest on August 13, 2012

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Journal of Reading Behavior Don: T: Don:

Guess what, I stole a bicycle. Don! I had to. to get home.

At that moment another student called the teacher and a second student stood at the teacher's desk waiting a turn. The teacher helped both of the students, and then a third student requested assistance. Finally after five minutes, the teacher sat alone at her desk when Don re-initiated the aside from his table in the rear: Don: T: Don: T: Don: T: Don: T: Don: T: Don: T: Don: T: Don: T: Don: T: Don:

T: Don: T:

You know I'm riding a bike to school tomorrow. Your own bicycle? Eh? Your own bicycle? No the one I got from Goptals. From what? From Goptals. Goptals. Yeah, the roller skating rink, it's in Latham. I know where it is. And you took a bicycle from there? Yeah, to get home with. I live in Cohoes and the roller skating rink is in Latham. I know. Ah, I couldn't walk eight miles. Well, how did you get to the roller skating rink? My sister brung me up in a white pickup. Alright, and didn't you plan to have someone, someway to get home? Well, my sister was to come up and get me, but she never did. She was supposed to come and get you. Yeah, but she was at (inaudible) and she couldn't. So, I called my brother-in-law and I told my brother-in-law, I ain't got no way to get home. He said, I can't come up and get you, cause I don't have no gas in my car. So I went outside and I started walking. First I started walking and then I saw the bike, it wasn't locked up or nothing. The bike was just sitting there, right out there near the road. I went in and asked some of the people whose bike it was. And it was nobody's, so I took it and went home. See, once you leave the building you can't go back in, not unless you have proof that you were in there. Em eh, so how did you know that it didn't belong to anyone? Because I asked most of the people that were in there. But you just said you couldn't go back in again. Downloaded from jlr.sagepub.com by guest on August 13, 2012

Conversational Asides Don:

T: Don T:

•i

)

Don T:

-i

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Well, you gotta have proof to go in there. See I asked the guys that ah, ... (inaudible)... see they had proof, I asked the guys How many people were there? Lots of people? Over 300 Now, could you really find whether or not if it belonged to someone if there were that many people in there? It must have belonged to someone. People just don't go away and leave a bike, do they? Yeah they do, some of the people. How would you feel Donald, if you left your bike outside, and you were there, and you came out and it was gone? You wouldn't like it very much.

At this point a student asks the teacher an instructional question and the teacher responds to it. The instructional sequence continues for three minutes. After it is completed, the teacher lights a cigarette and re-initiates the aside with Don. T: Don: T: Don: T: Don: T: Don:

You are going to take the bike back to Goptals, aren't you? Em, it's a brand new bike, why would I take it back? Don, I can't believe that of you. A lot of people ripped my bikes off. Well, do two wrongs make a right? Eh? Do two wrongs make a right? No they don't, never did and never will. Shucks

Another student has now walked up to the teacher's desk and asks for help with her assignment. When this student returns to her table, Don continues the aside: Don: T: Don: T:

He didn't even know Pardon me, Don? He didn't even know the bike was gone. I'm quite sure anybody who owned it would know their bike was gone. Maybe that kid worked very hard to get the money to pay for that bike. I remember one time when my son's bicycle was stolen, and my son had worked as a caddy at a golf course to make the money to pay for that bike. And he worked hard! He wasn't very big, he was a scrawny little guy, and he used to carry those big heavy golf bags around, and he made enough money to pay for that bike, and when it was stolen, he felt badly, so did I, cause I know he worked hard to earn the money.

The aside ends at this point, the teacher begins to work with another student, and the aside is not generatedDownloaded again.from jlr.sagepub.com by guest on August 13, 2012


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The next three examples represent topically related asides. In each of the sequences the initial utterance is related to the instructional activity, but then the members generated the discourse into other areas. The first example occurred on a summer day when eight students were in class. This aside (July 22) was the first to occur with the teacher during the instructional context. It was seventy minutes into the class, Woodrow sat next to the teacher's desk as she corrected his assignment. One of the items on his worksheet was the word cartoon, and then the teacher initiated the topically related sequence at that point: T:

Now, maybe, ah do you know who Snoopy is? Ahm, do you know what cartoons are? Woodrow: (Nods his head affirmatively) T: OK, Well, cartoon, Snoopy is a cartoon. It's that one about the dog who laid on top of his dog house, you know, there is always a bird flying, what's the bird's name? (T looks up at the rest of the class.) Walter: Sweety Pie? Several Students: Sweety Pie? T: The bird in Snoopy, my granddaughter would tell me in a minute. Walter: What the one with the big hat? T: Yeah, well in Snoopy, he's always lying on top of his bird house. Several Students: Oh T: On his back, and the bird is always flying around and I know that bird has a name but I can't think of it. Somebody remember to find out, OK? Walter: I love Charlie Brown T: I do too. Well, whose the one, whose the kid that always walks around with ahm, like a cloud over his head? Walter: Oh, oh, Pigpen T: Pigpen, yeah (laughs) Walter: (inaudible)... Pigpen... (inaudible) T: And then I like Lucy, the one who is the psychiatrist, and she asks if the doctor is in, I think it's Lucy, isn't it? Walter: Oh yeah Unidentified Student: Yeah T: and she always has some wisecrack remark to make, eh, I remember one, it was a long time ago, and one kid came to her and he said he was having all kinds of trouble in school because he couldn't Walter: I think it begins with an E. T: The bird, well anyway, the kid was having trouble in school and he couldn't remember, learn the difference between adding and subtracting, and she Downloaded from jlr.sagepub.com by guest on August 13, 2012


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T (continued): I can tell you your trouble, you're dumb (T laughs) Several Students: (laugh) T: (laughs) some psychiatrist! Students: (still laugh) The teacher returns to Woodrow's assignment and questions him about his written responses in the folder. Students are allowed to construct and close topically related asides. An example of this right is revealed in the following incident. Tou was the second student that day (May 28) to receive an individual turn with the teacher. During this turn, the teacher corrected Tou's paragraph which described the difficulties Tou and her family experienced when they first entered this country from Thailand. In her paragraph Tou explained that it took three or four months before her family became used to this country's way of life. After the teacher corrected the paragraph, Tou returned to her table, placed her paragraph on it and then walked back to speak with the teacher. Nobody was with the teacher when Tou initiated a topically related aside about a life-skills program that she and her husband recently completed at a local community college. In the aside Tou described some of the life-skill areas that were presented in the program, and then she described an oriental dinner that the college gave the students on the last day of the program. During Tou's explanation the teacher sustained the aside with backchannel behaviors, such as head nods and vocal aggregates, and questioning Tou for further information. After five minutes, Tou terminated the aside with an informative utterance that changed the topic to a procedural discussion about the loss of her school time card. The aside closed in the following manner: Tou: And I don't know, today, I come today and I don't see my card. T: It wasn't in? Tou: No. T: Oh, go ask Barbara. You know, the lady who sits right opposite the clock. Tou: Em eh, mean the black woman. T: Yeah, the tall black woman, yeah, ask Barbara about it. We want to make sure you punched in. The teacher then began to work with another student and Tou left the room to find Barbara. Asides serve an informational sharing function. In their asides the class members share and reveal their outside roles and identities. Without the asides the members would know less about one another and would be less able to construct new social relationships. Because without the asides, their classroom roles and identities would be predetermined in terms of their identity of being teacher or student. But with the information that is shared in their asides, the members take on different roles and identities. In this next example of a topically related aside, the teacher and student share information about their lifestyles, and the student reveals her outside role of mother. This aside developed on a day (June 11) when only four students attended class. Tongee sat at a front table and the teacher sat alone at her desk. Tongee worked at her assignment when she looked up at the teacher and spelled a word she couldn't read: Tongee T:

What's /c/e/r/e/a/l/? Downloaded from jlr.sagepub.com by guest on August 13, 2012 Cereal. You know what cereal is Tongee?


472 Tongee: T: Tongee: T: Tongee: T: Tongee: T: Tongee: T: Tongee: T: Tongeer T: Tongee: T: Tongee:

My daughter has it every morning. Yeah, um, you don't? I don't eat breakfast. Oh, do you drink coffee or juice? or anything? Yeah, coffee, one cup of coffee. But you don't eat anything? (shakes head negatively) I starve (laughs). How about on Saturday or Sunday, when you don't have to get up early? Same. Same thing, oh, because I don't eat any breakfast during the week when I get up early because I'm not hungry. Yeah But on Saturday and Sunday I like to have breakfast about ten or eleven o'clock. Yeah Then I eat a big breakfast, no lunch. Oh, lunch, yeah. If I eat too early I get sick, sometime... (inaudible)... Oh, if you feel that way, it's best not to eat. My daughter can. My daughter is very hungry, she can eat all day. SUMMARY

This study described the social contexts of one adult literacy class. The analysis of the classroom members' conversational asides indicated that students and teacher tacitly constructed three interactional contexts. The first, the waiting context, is characterized by the teacher's absence from the classroom and by student interaction in loud and lengthy talk. The second context, teacher entry, is marked by the teacher's arrival into the room and a change in student behaviors; here, certain kinds of student behaviors, particularly the loud joking and talk, are discontinued. The third context, instructional, is distinguished from the preceeding contexts by its procedural and instructional discourse topics. During the instructional context the students and teacher still continued to generate asides, however, here the students needed to be more skillful with their asides. If the teacher was to be the co-participant, students were required to initiate the aside with topically related utterances or when the teacher was unoccupied with procedural or instructional matters. Conversational asides served as an informational sharing function where members revealed their outside social roles and identities, such as, their marital status, their number of children, their employment and social activities. Although it has been suggested in another study (Mezirow, Darkenwald and Know, 1975) that adult education is a "loners game" where students have little social interaction with one another, the findings of this case study indicate that social interaction is frequent, friendly and informal. Downloaded from jlr.sagepub.com by guest on August 13, 2012


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The analysis of the members' conversational asides also indicated that the students and teacher held unequal classroom role relationships. Students oriented their behaviors to the teacher's mere presence in the classroom. The students' interaction with one another changed when the teacher entered so that behaviors previously acceptable would no longer be appropriate after she arrived. In addition, the teacher's role relationship with some of the students suggested a parental or authority figure where she evaluated student behaviors as revealed to her in their asides. There are several reasons to account for the unequal social role relationships. Although the literature in adult education describes adult students as independent and self-directed learners, adults who have had difficulties in learning to read are more likely to re-enter school with the same social assumptions and expectations as they held when in the elementary and secondary schools. It may be unrealistic to expect adults with minimal levels of literacy and many anxieties about learning to enter school as selfdirected learners. The learning characteristics of independence and self-directedness are more likely to be obtained gradually as the students acquire some success and confidence in their reading and learning abilities. REFERENCES CICOUREL, A. V. and KITUSE, J. The educational decision makers. Indianapolis: The BobbsMerrill Co., 1963. ERICKSON, F. Gatekeeping and the melting pot: Interaction in counseling encounters. Harvard Educational Review, 1975, 45, 44-70. FRIERE, P. The adult literacy process as cultural action for freedom. Harvard Educational Review, 1970, 40, 205-225. HALL, W. S., COLE, N., REDER, S., & DOWLING, G. Variations in young children's use of language: Some effects of setting and dialect. In R. Freedle (Ed.), Discourse production and comprehension (Vol. 1). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Company, 1977, 161-173. HUNTER, S. J., & HARMON, D. Adult illiteracy in the United States. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1979. JEFFERSON, G. Side sequences. In D. Sudnow (Ed.) Studies in social interaction. New York: The Free Press, 1972, 295-330. KNOWLES, M. The modern practice of adult education, andragogy versus pedagogy. New York: Association Press, 1970. LOVELL, R. B. Adult learning. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1980. MACKAY, R. Standardized tests: Objective and objectified measures. In A. V. Cicourel, S. H. M. Jennings, K. H. Leiter, R. MacKay, H. Mehan, & D. R. Roth (Eds.) Language use and school performance. New York: Academic Press, 1974, 218-247. MCDERMOTT, R. P. Social relations as contexts for learning. Harvard Educational Review, 1977, 47, 198-213. MEHAN, H. Structuring school structure. Harvard Educational Review, 1978, 48, 32-64. MEHAN, H. Learning lessons. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979. MESIROW, J. DARKENWALD, G., & KNOW, A. B. Last gamble on education. Washington, D. C : Adult Education Association, 1975. MISHLER, E. G. Studies in dialogue and discourse: II. Types of discourse initiated by and sustained through questioning. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 178, 7, 279-306.

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