Informal Science Education: Lifelong, Life-Wide, Life-Deep Informal science education cultivates diverse opportunities for lifelong learning outside of formal K-16 classroom settings, from museums to online media, often with the help of practicing scientists.
Theories of adult education, composition, and ESL encourage the use of peer response groups in teaching writing. But using such groups is difficult. I describeand provide the rationale for-a rather structured method I developed as a transition between no writing groups and the freer writing groups students might join in the future. The method worked very well with upper intermediate/advanced students in a college setting.Why should anyone use peer response groups with adult ESL students learning to write? Theories in the fields of adult education, composition, and English as a second language supply compelling reasons. One of the two major positions in contemporary adult education, represented by Knowles (1980), maintains that adults have an inherent need to be selfdirecting and that adult educators should help give expression to this in order to create the lifelong learners which our rapidly changing world demands. The other major position in the field, represented by Brookfield (1986;, agrees that instructors should encourage self-direction but adds that they should foster critical reflection by helping students analyze things and imagine alternatives. Writing groups encourage self-direction because they shift the focus from the teacher to the students. The method which I will describe shortly also encourages critical thinking because students evaluate their own and others essays and suggest alternatives to problematic passages.Current composition theory also supports the use of peer response groups. Focusing on the writing process more than the written product has created the "process approach" to teaching composition. Intervention during the composing process and an increased consideration of audience are principal tenets of the new approach (Hairston, 1982). Peer response groups intervene between drafts. Audience is emphasized because peers, rather than a teacher, are responding to, rather than grading, a student's writing in the here and now, rather than via marginal comments. Writers get a variety of feedback from a variety of readers, the disparate reactions underscoring the importance of audience.The composition field is also becoming increasingly aware of writing as a social act. Writing is often more social than solitary. For example,
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