Supporting Adult Learning Across Contrasting Settings: From Indian Singing Groups to Commercial Language Schools, and Grad Schools of Education

A commercial language school in Bali offers foreign visitors the chance to learn Indonesian toward a goal of fostering “a harmonious and integrated society.” However, when students are prompted to leverage their newly learned language skills to haggle with local sellers at a local market, conflict often ensues. This paper uses data from an ethnography of language policy to explore these interactions, arguing that language education for touristic consumption necessarily participates in exploitation of both cultural resources and local labor in a manner that invites conflict as students and sellers attempt to negotiate their respective identities amidst rapid socioeconomic change.

Schools of education (SOEs) often fail to provide organizational supports for struggling dissertators. EdD students may need additional supports due to shorter degree programs and full-time work commitments. This autoethnography reports how one PhD student in a SOE acted as a dissertation consultant for 35 EdD dissertators and examines how her experiences in composition, and education research and willingness to address socio-emotional needs contributed to this success. She argues this work is essential and that leveraging PhD students with similar backgrounds can provide a much needed organizational support for EdD dissertators.

This paper presents the case of a Carnatic singing class in an East Coast North American city. Students in the class were learners returning to the practice after a break, having learnt the art form growing up in India. Through discourse analysis of class sessions videos and participant interviews, this paper explores the ways in which students invoke memories of their past learning in structuring learning environments in the present moment. Taking a multi-sited approach across space-times, the paper proposes that returning to a practice in a space and time dislocated from its original setting hybridizes the practice.