G's original post and Mike's response suddenly seem to broken through a
dense mental fog for me. If I understand correctly, it isn't simply that
there aren't levels of competence but that the time any individual student
takes to achieve those levels of competence can vary and that if our goal is
truly education then we shouldn't grade on the time it takes if the student,
as Genevieve says, had kept their part of the bargain.
So I'm a little confused by Mike's comment:
"For a long time we at LCHC have railed againt all forms of
"Level 1 before Level 2" stage theories of literacy and
numeracy acquition. They are built for domination and conservatism.
They select in a deadly way."
I seems that Genevieve wasn't criticizing the concept of levels so much as
the equation of fixed time periods (1 semester, 1 year) with the acquisition
of skills that correspond to clearly distinct levels(?) of competency.
Also, I perceive another issue that has emerged very strongly in my current
transcript based research on students who start remedial English in the
community colleges. The analysis of our data on three central and not-so
central Southern California community colleges seems to indicate that there
are also issues of bilingualism here as well as learning how to do the
academic discourse. Maybe it's not only a question of different
temporalities for different individuals but also a question of different
temporalities for students with distinct educational backgrounds who have
distinct challenges to address when learning college English, although the
background and challenges are perhaps shared with a large number of other
students.
In any event, both of your comments have helped me reframe certain
approaches I have been taking in the analysis of the data I'm working with.
It's a great way to start the morning at play in the fields of student
transcripts. Thanks.
Paul H. Dillon