The Relationship Between Informal and Incidental Learning of Volunteers in Adult ESL and Their Intercultural Maturity

Abstract

Adult ESL is a high-turnover field, and volunteers are a critical component of the adult ESL workforce. Existing research focuses on learners’ experience in the classroom. There is limited attention to how teachers might change as a result of encountering immigrant learners in adult ESL. The purpose of this study was to understand the informal and incidental learning activities experienced by teachers in adult ESL settings and the impact of the learning on their intercultural maturity development. This study is based on survey data from 212 adult ESL teachers. The results demonstrated that adult ESL presented opportunities for informal and incidental learning for teachers. Both volunteers and paid instructors identified learning from teaching as the most important source of learning. Participation in informal and incidental learning activities was positively correlated with intercultural maturity. Further, organizational support promoted informal and incidental learning.

Walking in Between: a Collaged Storytelling of Data Collection During the Pandemic

“…In these articles, researchers focused on lessons learned from challenges and opportunities of collecting data and completing qualitative research projects during challenging circumstances and offered practical recommendations for qualitative researchers and instructors. In this article, my goal was not to present the results of my dissertation or illustrate my success and failures of doing qualitative research during the pandemic as I have done elsewhere (Li, 2021(Li, , 2023. I intended to document how collage making unawakens my affective and embodied knowing that has escaped from my consciousness and transformed my understanding of qualitative research.…”