A Curriculum of the Self

The unique perspective that adult learners have on writing and its instruction in low or no-cost education programs offers valuable information to both instructors of written components in these courses and to scholars exploring how writing in adult education functions as community literacy. After conducting interviews with instructors and students at six adult education programs, I identify significant tensions between the ways that instructors perceive their students to experience writing and the ways students describe their own writing experiences, particularly in the areas of process, enjoyment, and feedback. After situating low and no-cost adult education programs as sites of community literacy, I explore these tensions and propose that they contribute to and arise from instructors’ understanding that personal development through writing occurs with free-forms such as journaling, whereas students experience these benefits through prescriptive modes such as note-taking, rote copying, and dictation. I introduce a concept called the “curriculum of the self” to identify students’ use of prescriptive modes to enjoy and engage with writing, and I end by situating this concept in other tensions inherent to and ongoing in community literacy, including “turbulent flow” and sustainable practices of reciprocity.