Connected Learning: How Adults with Limited Formal Education Learn

by L. Lynn Thigpen, Tom Steffen (Contributor)

How does the world’s oral majority—adults with limited formal education (ALFE)—really prefer to learn? Few pause long enough to ask those who eschew print. The result of scholarly research and prolonged immersion in the Cambodian culture, Connected Learning exposes the truth about orality—the shame associated with limited formal education; the unfortunate misnomer that is orality ; the place of spirituality, grace, and hope; and the obvious but overlooked learning preferences. ALFE have different ways of learning and knowing, a different epistemology and culture from print learners, even though we all begin alike. The choice is not between Ong’s orality or literacy, but between learning from people or from print.

Dr. Thigpen, a veteran cross-cultural worker, shares remedies for the hegemony and inequities unwittingly fostered by the literate minority. In a dominant culture where learning from people is prime, how can educators with a preference for print adapt? Providing an important tool in the Learning Quadrants diagram, Connected Learning advises teaching to the quadrant and calls for seven necessary shifts in teaching. Anyone versed in orality will admit these findings have “global implications and applications” (Steffen). The reader who heeds will positively impact a huge portion of humanity.

Genres: Education

290 pages, Paperback

Published April 21, 2020

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book makes a huge contribution to the development of the reality movement. Dr. Lynn Thigpen presents a New paradigm for us to think about as we think about oral cultures. I think that the research in this book is well done and conclusions are very logical based on the evidence in Dr. Thigpen’s case studies. This book does not only give us a different way of thinking about this group of people but it gives us some resources to not only pass along information but to make the kind of connection that develops knowledge in the context of interpersonal relationships.