Community-Based Multicultural Immersion Programming: An Adult Learning Context

This study gives voice to the learning experiences of 21 adult learners who participated in a community-based multicultural immersion program in an urban Midwestern city plagued by racial tension. Key perspectives of their learning experiences were drawn from the factors that promoted multicultural immersion learning, its uses and its value. Introduction: Racial Tension in a Midwestern City In 1990, this city had 777,000 African American residents, more than any other city except New York and Chicago (O’Hara & Frey, 1992). At the time of this writing, it has the largest population of African Americans and Arab Americans of any major American city and is the most residentially segregated city in the nation (Farley & Frey, 1994). In the mid-1950s, the population of this city was approximately 2.5 million residents. By 1990, the city’s population had declined to fewer than one million, whereas the population of surrounding suburbs had increased to three million because whites had moved from the city to the suburbs during the 1960s and 1970s (Farley & Frey, 1994). White flight to the suburbs transformed the racial composition of this city from 20% African American in the mid-1950s to more than 75% African American and 20% Arab American in 1990. The remaining 5% are Hispanics, American Chaldeans, Asian Americans, and Caucasians (Russakoff, 1994). As a consequence, Chafets (1990) described this city as “an impoverished island surrounded by prosperous suburbs” (p. 19). In Myrdal’s (1994), trail blazing study entitled, An American Dilemma, he judged this city to have had the poorest racial relations than other midwestern cities, because of the strength of the Ku Klux Klan in the city and its large southern-born population. Myrdal based his assessment on the city’s long history of racial tension (as evidenced in race riots, cross burnings, church burnings, employment discrimination, and housing discrimination) and, more recently, racial profiling, racially motivated shootings, and neighborhood violence between persons of different races. Nonetheless, the history of race relations in this city is only a slightly worse version of patterns throughout the nation (Russakoff, 1994). According to O’Hare and Frey (1992), like most other large cities at the beginning of the 21st century, this city had areas that were made up of poor minority groups, surrounded by suburbs composed mostly of higher-income Caucasians. These patterns of residential segregation and racial tension, which are products of the 20th century, have continued to this day and complicate life in this community as it relates to race relations and closing the racial divide. These historical and contemporary issues also created a need for this urban city to identify some strategies to address and resolve these problems. The Research Problem The problem addressed in this study is that little is known about what factors promote learning in community-based multicultural immersion programs along with the uses and the value of this learning in the U.S. from the perspective of adult learners. This lack of knowledge limits the ability of community-based multicultural educators and adult educators working in similar fields in determining what adults have learned in these kinds of programs along with what kinds of skills they take away. Moreover, it limits adult educators’ ability to determine whether they are designing and facilitating multicultural programs that produce multicultural leaders and educators. Without a clear understanding of what has promoted learning in community-based multicultural programs from the perspective of adult learners, our current multicultural education practices may be failing to introduce the kind of information adult learners need in order to understand the complex nature of race and ethnicity in America, democratic values, and multicultural awareness, knowledge, understanding, and sensitivity. Therefore, a main purpose of this study was to help community-based multicultural program designers, facilitators, and adult educators working in the areas related to community-based multicultural education proceed from a more informed perspective when developing such programs of this kind for adult learners. Theoretical Framework To assist me in understanding and analyzing the adult learners perspective of their learning experiences in the MIP through a theoretical lens, I drew on the work of two distinguished adult education authors, who focused on (a) learning from experience through reflective processes and attending to feelings (Boud & Walker, 1993), (b) leaning from experience related to polyrhythmic realities, the intersection of one’s race, gender, class, language, and other cultural factors in the learning environment (Sheared, 1999, Learning From Experience Through Reflective Processes and Attending to Feelings Boud and Walker (1993) offered a means of analyzing an experience that is relevant to any type of learning experience, including that of adults participating in a community-based MIP. As part of their research, Boud and Walker analyzed a specific shared experience to understand how action and reflection interact. In their model, Boud and Walker illustrate how learning from experience occurs in nonlinear stages of preparation (the use of strategies and skills focused on promoting learning in the learning environment), experience (using experience as a foundation to stimulate reflection in action), and reevaluation (reflection, integration of experiences, validation of experiences, and appropriation or, in other words, owning experiences). A key component that distinguishes their model from similar work by Kolb (1984) and Cell (1984) is the inclusion of attending to feelings, which enhances or limits one’s opportunity for learning. Learning From Polyrhythmic Realities Sheared’s (1999) polyrhythmic realities model of learning from experience highlights the intersection of the learner’s race, gender, class, language, and other cultural factors (i.e., history, sexual orientation, and religion) in the learning environment as they relate to the learner’s lived cultural experiences. The concept of polyrhythmic realities is relevant to the process of giving voice to cultural factors in a multicultural learning environment. It is “an alternative way to address the effects of race, class, gender, language, and other cultural factors in a classroom environment” (p. 40). The polyrhythmic-realities framework also acknowledges a different way of knowing that is not grounded in the Western linear tradition. Sheared’s (1999) viewpoint was used in this study to connect the concepts of giving voice to polyrhythmic realities as they related to adult learners’ lived cultural experiences and learning from reflection. A relationship was established between Boud and Walker’s (1993) three-stage model and Sheared’s concept of polyrhythmic realities. Sheared focused mainly on giving voice to learners’ lived experiences in the learning environment as they intersect with race, gender, class, language, and other cultural factors. These concepts were inserted into Boud and Walker’s model (depicted in Figure 1) and were used to translate the process of giving voice to polyrhythmic realities in the learning environment into a process that draws upon reflection in terms of thinking and action. The resulting new model is shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: Boud and Walker’s (1993) Model of Reflection Processes in Learning from Experience Related to Sheared’s (1999) Model of Polyrhythmic Realities The Learning Environment Giving voice to learners in the learning environment through use of dialogue to uncover their polyrhythmic realities, i.e., the intersection of learners’ race, gender, class, language, and other cultural factors as they relate to their lived experiences Source: Author’s adaptation of concepts in D. Boud & D. Walker, “Barriers to Reflection on Learning” Using Experience for Learning,” Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 1993, pp. 77; and V. Sheared, “Giving Voice: Inclusion of African American Students’ Polyrhythmic Realities in Adult Basic Education,” New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, Summer 1999, No. 82, pp. 33-48. The work of Boud and Walker’s (1993) and Sheared’s (1999) provided the framework for this study in the context of giving voice to multicultural ways of knowing and being. The framework was useful to this study because it provided a perception of how learning takes place through reflection when giving voice to lived cultural experiences in the learning environment. Research Questions The study sought to highlight not only what the adult learners identified as the factors that promoted learning in the MIP, but also how this learning can be used and the value attached to this learning personally, in the workplace and in society. The following research questions were posed to guide the collection of data: (1) What factors were perceived to promote Focus on