Activists within the academy: the role of prior experience in adult learners' acquisition of postgraduate literacies in a postapartheid South African university

Cooper, Linda

Activists within the academy: the role of prior experience in adult learners' acquisition of postgraduate literacies in a postapartheid South African university

Journal Article

2011

Journal Title

Adult Education Quarterly

Link to Journal

http://aeq.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/08/27/0741713610380441.full.pdf

Publisher

SAGE

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

CILT

Faculty

Centre for Higher Education Development

Abstract

The article takes as a case study a group of disability rights activists who were given access to a master's program via Recognition of Prior Learning. The question explored is "Can adult learners' prior experiential knowledge act as a resource for the successful acquisition of postgraduate academic literacy practices?" The analysis is framed theoretically by Bourdieu's notions of habitus, capital, and field. It is argued that adult learners' acquisition of postgraduate literacies is an outcome of the interplay between three factors: (a) student habitus and dispositions, (b) pedagogic agency, and (c) the nature of the disciplinary field. Although the program under investigation made complex demands on students, lecturers' understanding of student habitus enabled students' prior experiential knowledge to be tapped as a resource. However, students also exercised agency in negotiating the forms of academic habitus acquired, and the trajectory of their agency involved a mix of accommodation, resistance, and challenge.