Anne

“In the idea of continuity lies the synthesis, the bridge from one developmental balance to the next (Daloz, p.193).

Anne’s family was stationed in Saudi Arabia when she decided to return to college. Thirty-five and married directly after high school, she had only infrequently been away from her family, and residency back in the States for a few weeks was a requirement for the program she entered. Daloz discovered the complexity of her situation while he mentored Anne through her third residency in a philosophy class. She related to Daloz that her first residency in women’s literature had too much of a feminist spin, but she managed to successfully complete while working with a feminist mentor. The second residency in an art class found her feeling more comfortable except for uneasiness about a male mentor who she felt “came too close” despite her being married. The art instructor labeled her work “conventional” and “inhibited” Anne said after she rejected his attentions. Philosophy, she felt would be the subject to give her a level platform with men because it would sharpen her intellect through critical thinking.

Daloz transcribed his student’s stories as they were told to him. In the interviews, the reader senses, the balance of objectivity and care, a sense of both neutrality and empathy that he embodies as a listener and as a writer. Rural Vermont diners, the glasshouse workplace of engineers, and post-education interviews along Vermont beaches provide the setting for the mentor-mentee meetings. I sense that Larry Daloz integrated the natural and everyday settings to allow the authentic voices of the students to emerge in an informal and less structured environment than a university office.

Barriers for Anne surfaced in interactions with her authoritarian grandfather and her Harvard educated father –in-law. These two figures represent the external acquisition of knowledge and the duality of truth—this way is right – the other way is wrong. Anne attempted to at first discuss Socrates with her father-in –law, a religious minister. Basically, he devalued each point she brought up and held his own views as truth, backing his position by saying that he was educated at Harvard and studied several years of Latin. In his book Daloz discussed a developmental theory of adult learners where they begin their journey in duality with some multiplicity.

Moving away from a reliance on authority, in Anne’s case was questioning the dual precepts of patriarchy as represented by her male relatives. This questioning brings her to the next stage of multiplicity, where the learner begins to doubt the old world of dualism and external authority. Instead, one recognizes multiple ways of looking at both familiar and less familiar issues.

Her transformation takes place through an alignment with and deeper understanding of the women in her family including her daughter and mother-in-law. Here we see that the educational journey does not exist in an isolated container but encompasses the whole life of the learner. Gilligan felt that women’s transformation is like a spiral (Daloz, p.135), wherein the initial stages she seeks self-expression and self-protection onto the next stage where she is motivated by concern and compassion for those beyond herself, and then to the “synthesis” – an alchemy of the two previous stages in development.

Finally, Anne successfully completed a philosophical paper which integrated the cultural aspects of her relationships, the traditional norms of the country where she lived, and the ideas of ancient Greeks and Christians--the thesis "What it means to be a woman of virtue." In the paper, she looked through her own lens, as well as others. She came to synthesize her experience and her education, and to view these through the lens of contextual relativism—the ultimate developmental stage of the adult learner.

Daloz explained this stage of contextual relativism: “… to construct a world first of multiple opinions but eventually—and more importantly---of multiple ways of arriving at those opinions. The discovery that things can be related, that connections can be made rather than truths found begins to dawn and the world is reborn on a whole new level” (Daloz, p. 83).

Next time we will visit Eric, the engineer who finds his authentic self in his treks through the woods.

For those stopping by, please feel free to post comments to me, and I would like to know what you feel about these stages in developmental theory of adult learners. Have you experienced duality, multiplicity, contextual relativism or something else? Best---Ann C., June 23, 2011