participant leadership in adult basic education: negotiating academic progress and leadership...

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Participant leadership in adult basiceducation: negotiating academicprogress and leadership responsibilitiesBrendaly Drayton a & Esther Prins aa Pennsylvania State University , USAPublished online: 12 Jul 2011.

To cite this article: Brendaly Drayton & Esther Prins (2011) Participant leadership in adult basiceducation: negotiating academic progress and leadership responsibilities, International Journal ofLifelong Education, 30:3, 349-365, DOI: 10.1080/02601370.2011.570872

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Participant leadership in adult basiceducation: negotiating academic progressand leadership responsibilities

BRENDALY DRAYTON and ESTHER PRINSPennsylvania State University, USA

This article examines the conflicts and challenges that student leaders in adult basic edu-cation and literacy programs experience in balancing their leadership responsibilities withacademic endeavours. Based upon a case study of an adult basic education student leader-ship council in New York City, the article shows that leadership activities can both supportand impede academic progress. The mediating factors were time requirements for imple-mentation of leadership activities and the perceived priorities of the participants, whoused various strategies to manage their academic and leadership responsibilities. Councilinvolvement also supported and changed their academic, vocational and personal aspira-tions. This study alerts adult educators to the ways in which leadership activities can com-plicate learners’ academic pursuits, the need both to respect student leaders’ choices andto provide guidance on balancing their multiple responsibilities, and the importance ofcultivating literate capabilities through leadership activities.

Introduction

Participatory approaches to adult basic education and literacy (ABEL) aim toequip learners to influence the decisions that affect them and to engenderchange in their lives and communities (Fingeret and Jurmo 1989, Horsman2001, Sauve 2001). For instance, learners in such programmes may serve on theboard of directors, participate in hiring committees or implement student-direc-ted initiatives. Such activities enable students to share power with the staffthrough participation in decision making, contribute to students’ psychosocialwell-being and individual and collective agency and enhance programme effec-tiveness, chiefly by addressing participant needs and by increasing their invest-ment in the programme (Campbell 2001).

Despite the benefits of student inclusion in governance and decision making,research suggests few programmes offer such opportunities. For example, of the271 US-based ABEL programmes in Purcell-Gates and colleagues’ (1998: 19)

Brendaly Drayton is a doctoral student in adult education at the Pennsylvania State University. Corre-spondence: Pennsylvania State University, Adult Education, 314 Keller Bldg, University Park, 16802United States. Email: [email protected] Prins is an associate professor of adult education at the Pennsylvania State University. Corre-spondence: Pennsylvania State University, Adult Education Program, 305B Keller Bldg., UniversityPark, 16802 United States. Email: [email protected]

INT. J. OF LIFELONG EDUCATION, VOL. 30, NO. 3 (MAY–JUNE 2011), 349–365

International Journal of Lifelong Education ISSN 0260-1370 print/ISSN 1464-519X online � 2011 Taylor & Francishttp://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

DOI: 10.1080/02601370.2011.570872

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study, 89% gave students little or no say over ‘course content, activities or mate-rials’ or other aspects of their programme. By contrast, in ‘dialogic’ programmes(11%) students ‘work with teachers to create the course, choose the materials,activities, etc. Students are also involved in all aspects of the programme, mayserve on the board, make decisions regarding meeting times, class rules, classstructure and location, etc.’ (1998: 14). Exploring successful examples of dia-logic programmes can expand our understanding of how best to foster substan-tive student inclusion in ABEL and adult education more broadly.

In addition, the scant research on participatory practises in ABEL focuses pri-marily on the rationale, benefits and challenges of, participation (Fingeret andJurmo 1989, Sauve 2001) such as democratising student–staff power relations (Fre-iwirth and Letona 2006). Student leadership is often portrayed as an unqualifiedgood; however, we should also recognise the hidden costs and struggles inherentin student leadership and programme governance. Such activities require consid-erable time and emotional and mental energy, yet we know little about how adultlearners reconcile their programme leadership roles with their educational workor how they resolve the challenges encountered in leadership activities.

Utilising a case study of an ABEL programme in New York City, this articleexamines how adult learners negotiated their involvement in the programme’sstudent leadership council with their academic progress and their personal, aca-demic and vocational aspirations. We argue that student leadership providesmany benefits, yet it can also inhibit academic progress if students become toooverwhelmed with leadership responsibilities. Students prioritised activities basedupon what they most valued at the time, suggesting that adult educators shouldprovide guidance concerning time management while respecting the decisions ofstudent leaders. Thus, this study expands our understanding of how adult learn-ers experience and make decisions about involvement in programme leadership.

Literature review

This study draws upon literature on participation and student leadership inABEL and on work–life balance research that illuminates how adults negotiatemultiple roles and responsibilities. Participant leadership affords numerous ben-efits for adult learners. Chiefly, it fosters a sense of ownership and control overtheir learning (Fingeret and Jurmo 1989, Campbell 2001), encourages criticalthinking and democratic decision making (Jurmo 1987) and enhances learners’capacity to effect change in personal, programmatic and community affairs(Auerbach 1992). It also promotes psychosocial benefits such as increased self-esteem, confidence and capacity for collective action (Suave 2001).

Attempts to share power, however, are undermined by factors such as pro-grammes’ organisational structures (Cervero and Wilson 1994), student and staffperceptions of leadership roles, staff members’ commitment to empoweringlearners (Horsman 2001), learners’ time constraints and the sense of powerless-ness or inadequacy produced by learners’ marginalised socio-economic positionand their participation in educational settings. First, the leadership andingrained hierarchical structures of the sponsoring organisation may thwart edu-cators’ attempts to include students in decision making (Cervero and Wilson1994, Inglis 1994). Limited financial and human resources and funder

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requirements also inhibit student-initiated activities that fall outside the aca-demic realm (Campbell 2001, Scott and Schmitt-Bosnick 2001), since such activi-ties are time-intensive and may not align with funder goals such as jobplacement or standardised test gains. Even when organisational structures doallow student input and representation in decision making, learners have littleinfluence or control if staff members disregard their opinions and recommenda-tions. Indeed, Campbell (2003: 9) reminds us, ‘Simply engaging lesser-heardvoices does not necessarily lead to citizen [or student] power over decisions.’The degree to which student leaders are heard and their ideas are implemented,then, is influenced by the programme’s social and political context (Cerveroand Wilson 1994, Inglis 1994).

Second, the widespread conflation of low literacy with lack of intelligenceand motivation predisposes educators to dismiss adult learners’ opinions, sugges-tions and leadership activities (Horsman 2001). These negative conceptions,however, belie the ingenuity, persistence and strength of low-literacy students tosurvive and provide for themselves and their families in difficult socio-economiccircumstances (Quigley 1997).

Third, educators and learners may have conflicting assumptions and expecta-tions for sharing power (Campbell 2001, Freiwirth and Letona 2006). Practitio-ners are challenged to cede some control and exercise power more equitably,whereas students may be uncomfortable exercising leadership in new ways(Baum 2002, Freiwirth and Letona 2006, Everett et al. 2007). Although Everettet al. (2007) highlighted the additional staff time, resources and coping strate-gies required to share power, their analysis did not include participants. How-ever, prior research suggests that problems pertaining to interpersonalrelationships and teamwork arise as student leaders learn how to overcome dif-ferences, utilise their strengths and work together to accomplish shared goals(Horsman 2001). This article extends the literature on student leadership byexamining an underexplored topic: the conflicts and dilemmas learners face asthey blend leadership responsibilities with academic goals and activities.

Finally, research on participatory adult education suggests that time structuresstudents’ commitment to, and ability to fulfil, leadership responsibilities, espe-cially for women who are primary caregivers (Campbell 1994, Smith 2006).These studies rightly caution educators not to misconstrue lack of participationas disinterest, yet they do not address how student leaders manage time con-flicts.

Although student leadership is typically portrayed as an opportunity to developcertain skills and experiences, some of the participants in this study referred totheir leadership activities as ‘hard work’. Accordingly, this article integratesresearch on work-life balance that explores how people fulfil roles and responsibil-ities in life domains such as home, work and community (Clark 2000, Crookeret al. 2002, Guest 2002, Greenhaus et al. 2003). Focusing primarily on time andenergy conflicts, this literature is useful for analysing how adult learners negotiatethe responsibilities of programme leadership and academic study.

Work-life balance research suggests five approaches to managing role respon-sibilities, a typology we have applied to student leadership:

(1) Segmentation (Evans and Bartolome 1984): student leader separates differ-ent life domains;

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(2) Spillover (Piotrkowski 1978, Staines 1980): student leadership and otherresponsibilities encroach upon each other;

(3) Compensation (Staines 1980): student leader compensates for neglectingone domain by being overly committed in another;

(4) Instrumental (Evans and Bartolome 1984): student leader uses leadershipactivities to promote success in vocational or academic goals; and

(5) Conflict (Evans and Bartolome 1984): student leader sacrifices someresponsibilities to meet the high demands in both arenas, such as missingclass for a leadership activity.

Whether a person perceives balance or imbalance is influenced by organisa-tional and individual factors (Crooker et al. 2002, Guest 2002). According toGuest’s (2002) analytical model of the nature, causes and consequences ofwork–life imbalance, organisational factors include the demands and cultureof each life domain (expectations, roles, responsibilities), whereas individualfactors encompass personal characteristics, such as work orientation, personal-ity, energy, personal control and coping, gender, age and life and careerstage, that shape how one perceives and enacts domain-specific roles. Organi-sational practices and individual psychological boundaries dictate when andwhere responsibilities can be fulfilled. For instance, a student may segmenther leadership and academic responsibilities even though the programmeallows students to perform leadership activities during class hours. When workspills into domains such as education, family and leisure time, the salience ofthe domain determines whether people perceive this as imbalance or balance.For example, a learner who values leadership activities above other domainsmay not perceive the extra hours as an imbalance. According to Guest, theperception of balance or imbalance respectively generates psychosocial bene-fits such as work satisfaction and mental well-being, or negative effects suchas stress, illness and negligence of home and work responsibilities. In brief,work–life balance scholarship suggests that the perceived relationship betweenleadership responsibilities and academic pursuits depends on the availabilityof time and the nature of the situation. In addition, balance does not meandevoting equal time and energy to each domain, but includes subjective com-ponents such as values (Crooker et al. 2002) and satisfaction (Greenhauset al. 2003).

Method

Our interest in student leaders’ negotiation of leadership and academic respon-sibilities was initiated by the first author’s conversation with a former student atthe Downtown Learning Center, an ABEL programme in Brooklyn, New York,where the first author previously served as a volunteer tutor. The student sharedthat she was leaving the programme because her responsibilities in the StudentAdvisory Council (hereafter ‘the Council’) made it difficult to complete her aca-demic work. This conversation alerted the first author to the price that studentsmay pay for their leadership activities, even hindering their educational goals oracademic persistence. To explore these issues, we crafted the following researchquestions:


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(1) According to adult learners, how has participation in their programme’sleadership council supported or hindered progress toward their academicgoals?

(2) How do learners balance programme leadership responsibilities with pur-suit of their academic goals?

(3) Does Council involvement create time conflicts for learners? If so, how dothey resolve these conflicts?

(4) How does Council involvement change learners’ academic, vocational andpersonal aspirations, if at all?

We employed a case study design because it is well-suited to answering such‘how’ questions (Yin 2003). The purpose of a case study ‘is to gather compre-hensive, systematic and in-depth information about each case of interest’(Patton 1990: 384): in this instance, Council members. We selected an instru-mental case study (Stake 2005) because we wanted to learn what the DowntownLearning Center could teach us about student leadership more broadly. TheCenter was an ideal choice because it had a student council, we knew at leastone of the Council members had difficulty managing academic and leadershipresponsibilities and the first author had access to the site.

Participants were selected through criterion and opportunistic purposive sam-pling (Patton 2000). The director identified eight currently enrolled studentswho had been active Council members. Of these, five students agreed to beinterviewed; another student, who volunteered at the programme while attend-ing college, was recruited at the suggestion of another interviewee.

The first author conducted semi-structured face-to-face interviews with sixCouncil members—all literacy students—and one telephone interview with theprogramme director. All participants granted permission to use their real names.Joni, a White woman in her early 50s, is the founder and director of the Down-town Learning Center. She was also the driving force behind the creation of theCouncil. Grace, a single, 55-year-old Latina, was the Council president forapproximately five years until her resignation due to poor health. She hoped toobtain her GED in preparation for a new job. Grace’s brother, Carlos, is a 45-year-old single Latino and was a Council member for two years. He had acquiredhis GED through the Downtown Learning Center and was in college at the timeof the study. Carmita, a single, Black Barbadian immigrant, is 54 years old andwas vice president for the previous two years. Her long- and short-term goalsrespectively were to obtain her GED and to learn to read and write so she couldhelp her young grandson and independently take care of her ‘own affairs’.Doreen is a 58-year-old married Black Jamaican female immigrant who is wheel-chair-bound due to multiple sclerosis. The only Council member with previousstudent leadership experience, Doreen joined the Council at its inception andwas the ‘prayer warrior’, a person who prays for the Council, Council activitiesand the programme. Seeing reading as ‘necessary for survival’, she wanted toimprove her reading and writing so she could be independent and read theBible. Rolex, a Black Jamaican immigrant, is 26 and was vice president for ashort period. ShammyAnn, a single 26-year-old Black female Guyaneseimmigrant, was Council secretary for four years. Both came to the programmeto obtain their GED diploma as a precursor to college and culinary schoolrespectively with the final goal of entrepreneurship.


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The first author knew all the participants and was familiar with some Councilactivities, which contributed to learners’ openness during interviews. Participantswere asked what the programme and the Council meant to them, how they man-aged leadership responsibilities and other life demands and how Council activi-ties benefited them and the programme. Lasting 45 to 75 minutes, interviewswere audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Detailed summary notes werewritten within 24 hours of each interview. The second data source was a set ofdocuments describing the Council’s organisation and purpose such as a Councilmeeting agenda and the letter to the student body explaining the Council’sgoals.

Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006) was used to unearth the experi-ences and perceptions that conveyed students’ strategies for negotiating theirvaried responsibilities. We identified key words and phrases demonstratedthrough repetition or significance. For example, each participant referred tohighly valued activities and pursuits as ‘important’. Using Nvivo software, weplaced the data into categories (e.g., references to ‘important’ activities) andthen broader themes (e.g., making decisions based on what learners consideredimportant). After analysing individual transcripts, they were compared with theother transcripts to discern similarities and differences. Council documents wereused to triangulate participants’ understanding of the Council purposes andactivities.

The article aims to provide readers with sufficient details to assess how thestudy applies to their respective situations (Ruddin 2006). Although based on asmall sample, this study can illuminate the challenges student leaders face, thesituations that promote role conflict, and strategies used to manage these chal-lenges. In so doing, the article contributes to the ‘context-dependent knowledgeand experience’ that underlies ‘expert activity’ (Flyvbjerg 2006).

Setting

The Downtown Learning Center offers free English as a second language, liter-acy, GED (high school equivalency), computer and parenting classes to approxi-mately 1000 racially diverse adults. A large, non-denominational Protestantchurch provides funding, space, staff, volunteers and oversight. Although somestudents are church members, the programme is open to anyone regardless ofreligious affiliation. Participant leadership was part of the initial programmedesign. According to a 2002 letter to the student body, the Student AdvisoryCouncil was established ‘to help students achieve their goals. . .[and] to give stu-dents a voice’. The Council has evolved and grown exponentially since its incep-tion in 2001, becoming more involved in making programmatic decisions.

At the time of the study (summer 2008), the Council was in hiatus and theprogramme was in transition due to new leadership. During the 2001–2006 per-iod covered by the study, the student body grew from over 400 to approximately1000 students. Council participation was open to all students and leadershippositions—president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and ‘prayer warrior’, aposition that reflects the organisation’s Christian roots—were determined annu-ally by majority vote. Each year the Council joined the staff and interested stu-dents at a strategic planning retreat to review the Council’s performance and to


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identify goals for the upcoming year. At the outset, the Council decided to focuson fundraising to meet student and school needs, meeting once a month ormore often as needed.

Council activities were determined by the needs members saw among studentsand in the programme. Council members established the snack bar, or ‘Cafe’,to provide in-house refreshments so students would not miss class time by pur-chasing food outside the programme. Council fundraising activities provided asign for the programme, student IDs, scholarships for college-bound studentsand funding to attend the strategic planning retreat. They organised a bookdrive to start the library, an annual tutor appreciation dinner, a coat drive andThanksgiving meals for the needy. Council members also acted as programmerepresentatives at community functions and established partnerships with otherorganisations. The annual barbeque, the primary fundraising event, subsidisedstudent supplies and transportation. In addition, Council members were oftenthe first point of contact in the support network for student problems and class-room issues such as disruptive cell phone usage. Furthermore, they volunteeredto assist the staff with tasks such as registration, filing paperwork and contactingstudents.

The study participants believed the Council’s purpose was to ‘give students avoice’, a purpose that was accomplished by ‘meeting student needs’ throughfundraising for specific projects. The Council existed ‘to make a difference’ andto ‘help people transition’ from one phase of their lives to the next by enablingthem to ‘overcome obstacles preventing them from getting their GED’. It alsoprovided a venue ‘for letting the people in charge know how [students] feel’and ‘bringing about change’. These statements illustrate the meanings thatCouncil participation held for ABE students. We turn now to elaborating theresearch findings.

Findings

Making academic progress

The data reveal that Council participation both supported and hindered stu-dents’ academic goals, although some participants seemed unaware of the Coun-cil’s positive or negative influence. One participant, Carmita, stated that Councilservice ‘helped me even with speaking. It helped me with reading [and] beingable to understand [what I read]’. During her time in the programme, Carmita’sliteracy level improved from basic to intermediate; however, her tutor warnedthat the time she committed to leadership responsibilities would impede heracademic goals. Although Carmita did not believe Council activities hamperedher academic progress, her subsequent reorganisation of priorities indicatedotherwise: ‘If I pick back up the snack bar again I would not get my GED. If Icome back to school it will be strictly for my classes’. This admission complicatesher earlier statement that Council activities helped her advance academically.

Shammyann, Doreen and Carlos did not believe Council involvement influ-enced their academic progress either positively or negatively, yet the examplesbelow suggest the Council supported their literacy and numeracy developmentby presenting opportunities to practise these skills. Shammyann provided one


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example when describing how the Council obtained vending machines for stu-dents to buy snacks:

We had to write how much the vending machines would cost and how wewere going to get it and we had to, like, call around and find outhow we can get the vending machines. We actually had to do researchbefore we actually write the proposal.

To manage the snack bar, Council members also had to set prices and com-plete cash transactions. Participants may not have recognised the influence ofCouncil activities on their academic development because these activities didnot involve formal instruction and thus, in their minds, did not count as doingliteracy or math.

Council participation fostered communication skills useful in personal andbusiness settings. Projects such as managing the snack bar, petitioning churchleaders for vending machines and planning the annual barbeque fundraiser pro-vided experience for ‘handling problems in the business world’. Students devel-oped interpersonal skills by working collectively to achieve shared goals,managing interpersonal disagreements and intergenerational conflicts with stu-dents in the snack bar, establishing partnerships with other organisations, com-municating effectively with church and programme leaders and speaking inpublic settings.

According to participants, the snack bar, which they considered the Council’sgreatest accomplishment, became a site for peer tutoring, achieving literacygoals, developing interpersonal skills and mentoring. However, unlike the otherstudy participants, Grace and Rolex believed Council involvement hinderedtheir academic progress, although both stated that extenuating circumstanceswere also factors. Grace had a strong emotional tie to the snack bar, resulting inhigh investment of time and energy in it that left her exhausted. Her case illus-trates the Council’s precedence over other life domains and the ‘spillover’ ofCouncil activities. Her commitment to the Council was complicated by medicalproblems that hindered concentration; being busy helped her to ‘block out thepain’, suggesting she also used Council activities in an ‘instrumental’ fashion.However, she believed the Council detracted from her academic progressbecause her emotional and time investment encroached upon other importantareas in her life. In retrospect, she believed that limiting the time and effort sheinvested in each area was important for her well-being: ‘I didn’t put that bound-ary. . .. That is something that I learned from my mistakes: that everything in lifeyou have to put a boundary’. She later elaborated:

I learned that if you want to have a meaningful life or to get your life inorder, that you need boundaries. . .. You know, you have to set aside, well,three hours is for class. This time is to study. This time is to do my home-work and this is the time that we are going to have a meeting. . .. You haveto divide your time.

Similarly, Rolex, the vice president, spent most of his time with the Council,making it ‘hard’ to progress academically. He commented, ‘I had no time forschool work. I had no time for work’, so he worked at night and did homework


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during class time. Although ‘a lot of issues outside the school’ also hamperedhis academic pursuits, these comments hint at the struggle he and other partici-pants faced in balancing academic work and student leadership as Council activi-ties increased.

Navigating Council activities and academic responsibilities

Council activities, many of which required considerable time and energy,complicated some participants’ fulfilment of their academic responsibilities.According to participants, daily snack bar administration was by far the mosttime-consuming Council activity—it required shopping, cooking, supervising,and setting and cleaning up—yet was also one of the most beneficial in meetingstudent needs because it decreased their out-of-class time.

Involvement in Council activities, particularly the snack bar, varied accordingto students’ level of responsibility, availability, capability (e.g., finding bargains,cooking, computer literacy) and the factors motivating their participation in theprogramme and the Council. Each participant considered the Council impor-tant but adopted different strategies for managing their responsibilities. Doreendid not experience time conflicts because her disability limited her involvement,enabling her to ‘segment’ leadership and academic activities. Rolex’s experienceillustrates the ‘conflict’ model: He resigned after a brief period as Council vicepresident because he could not serve the Council while having two jobs. Sham-myann ‘managed very well’ because she did not lose sight of her initial goal toget her GED, which was strengthened by her desire to ‘live on her own’ andown a Guyanese restaurant. Her ‘segmentation’ approach is evident in herassessment of the amount of time she spent on Council activities and academicresponsibilities:

I would say about 50/50 because I won’t place my class before the StudentCouncil or the Student Council before my class. Because you have to lookat it from the beginning: I didn’t start the programme for the StudentCouncil. I started the programme because I want to accomplish my GEDand move forward, not for the Student Council.

For her and Rolex, the Council was ‘just an experience’, a view thatallowed them to ‘segment’ school and Council. Shammyann, in fact,expressed anger over Council members who ‘got caught up’ in Council activi-ties and lost sight of their academic goals, and over the staff’s perceived fail-ure to intervene:

There is nobody there to push them [students] and say, ‘Well okay, youknow what? You need to go to class,’ or ‘You need to do this,’ or ‘Youneed to do that.’ It is like, that [not providing guidance] means you don’tcare. . .. People get caught up.

Yet she also noted times when the director intervened by prohibiting Councilmeetings during Sustained Silent Reading (a 30-minute period where teachersand students read self-selected books) and reassigning some Council members


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to class time. However, some Council members rejected Joni’s suggestion toinvolve other students in managing the snack bar, a response that highlights stu-dent agency in deciding how to blend leadership and academic work.

Carlos navigated time conflicts by ‘choosing what was most important at thetime’. He referred to the time he could not help with the annual barbequebecause he had something to do:

There is always stuff that is more important than another. You try and doyour best and the good thing about it is that being on the Council is likeyou are never alone, because let’s say like if you had a function to be atand you couldn’t be at it [Council activity]. . .. At least you would bebriefed later on how things went and so forth.

Carmita also chose what she deemed important: the snack bar. She prioritisedthis because she believed it met student needs, although it meant sacrificing herclass time. When asked how much time she spent weekly on Council activities,she responded, ‘From 9:00 [a.m.] to 3:00 [p.m.] and then I would go to workfrom 3:00 and I would be back here at 7:00 to 9:00 [p.m.]. Three days a week.’Carmita did not attend class but met with a tutor twice a week and scheduledsnack bar activities around her work and babysitting her grandson. Carmita didnot consider the snack bar more important than her GED; rather, she believedit was ‘important’ to establish the snack bar for students at that time. Her Coun-cil involvement was a form of caregiving, an activity also evident in her descrip-tion of her mothering role to younger students and her volunteering to cookfor the homeless on weekends.

Similarly, Grace chose the snack bar as her primary responsibility, one thatrequired an intensive time commitment. Grace combined ‘instrumental’ and‘compensation’ approaches: She perceived her work in the snack bar as a pre-cursor to a business venture and she chose to help others since health problemsimpeded her concentration in the classroom. She sometimes scheduled herCouncil activities so that another Council member could spend time withher husband, illustrating Grace’s propensity for placing others’ needs above herown. In some instances, Grace rescheduled her mother’s medical appointmentsor asked for her brother’s assistance so she could work on Council activities.Grace offered three reasons that she eventually stopped attending class andspent most of her time with the snack bar and other Council activities. First, thesnack bar was Grace’s ‘dream’ and she believed someday it would become asmall business; hence she often referred to it as the ‘cafe’. Second, snack barmanagement provided a distraction from her health problems. In hindsight sheregretted her decisions:

All of my time went to the Student Council. I think [it] is important not todo what I did. Like I stopped going to GED class because I am concentrat-ing so much on the snack bar, the cafe and forgot about me. [I] forgotabout the GED and what is important; that you [need to]. . .put some time[for]. . .yourself, not everything to the Student Council. But since I wanteda strong Student Council I decided to spend a lot of time with [it], but [itis]. . .important that you don’t do that. You have to think about your GED,too.


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Third, Grace enjoyed helping people, as demonstrated by her volunteeringwith the elderly. Helping others was ‘something that was always in my heart’.She thought ‘it was important to be available’ for students because they missedan hour of class buying food outside. As the other participants confirmed,Grace, the president and Carmita, the vice president, assumed the primaryresponsibilities of managing the snack bar, with assistance from others.

Guest’s (2002) model suggests that expectations influence how individualsperceive and enact roles in different life domains. Participants in this caseviewed the Council’s ethos of commitment and teamwork as critical to its suc-cess, as illustrated by Doreen’s comment:

I don’t think this [being on the Council] is for everybody because some peo-ple may not have the patience for it. They don’t want to go to meeting[s]and get involved, but if you have a heart for it you are going to stay there-and you are going to be persistent. If your heart is not in it, when things gobad nobody can’t find you because your heart wasn’t in it. So if we start againwe want to get people whose heart is in there, who want to help people, whoreally want to make a difference, because to me that is what it is all about—making a difference in people’s lives, making a difference in the school.

Likewise, Rolex stressed the importance of commitment when he likenedCouncil membership to paying rent:

[You have to be] committed to what you got to do. Like you got to payyour rent a certain day and you got to make a point to pay your rent. Ifyou don’t pay your rent, you get put out. The same with the Student Coun-cil: if you are president you have to make sure everything is going right.

Participants’ understanding of commitment may have shaped their percep-tions of imbalance. For instance, Doreen described committed people as thosewho persist in their desire to help people and Rolex’s rent analogy aligned withhis decision to resign due to his work schedule. In sum, individual expertise,time availability and perception of what was considered important mediated howCouncil members navigated the responsibilities of their life domains.

Changes in personal, academic and vocational aspirations

The data reveal that Council involvement expanded and changed students’ aca-demic, vocational and personal aspirations. Successful implementation of Councilinitiatives such as the snack bar and purchase of vending machines enhancedlearners’ assessments of their capabilities and expanded their perceptions of whatthey wanted to—and believed they could—accomplish. For instance, Council activ-ities fostered Shammyann’s confidence in her abilities, supporting her goal ofattending culinary school and owning a restaurant. In the Council, she said, ‘Youlearn what you need to do if you go into the business world, like if you have a prob-lem or something you know what you need to do’. In addition, the annual barbe-que tested her culinary skill: ‘So you know somebody else likes your food. So thatis one of the things, okay, you know that I can actually open a business.’


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Similarly, Council activities enhanced Rolex’s sense of accomplishment andconfidence in business ownership. Likening the Council to a ‘big business’, henoted that by inculcating practises such as documenting everything in writing:‘It teaches you about life—outside life if you want to be in the big community,to run a business like Macy’s.’ Referring to the commitment and responsibilityCouncil membership demanded, Rolex remarked, ‘It made me a man. I take alot of responsibility.’

Council involvement influenced personal goals. Doreen was encouraged bythe Council’s accomplishments and the difference it made at the DowntownLearning Center. Writing her autobiography became a goal she believed wouldmake a difference in people’s lives because if ‘you can work and see things hap-pening here [in the programme], you can work on your personal goals. If yoube persistent and don’t give up, you can achieve it’. For Carlos, participation inthe Council awakened compassion for others and joy in meeting their needs.When describing the benefits of the Council, he surmised, ‘You wind up tryingto be compassionate to people and their lives and in the process you wind upcaring for these people. It makes a lot of the difference. . .. It helps me to be abetter person myself and be happy with myself.’ Helping other students over-come challenges stimulated his desire to help people instead of focusing on hiscareer, which was ‘mostly driving everything’.

For Carmita and Grace, Council participation changed and then redirectedtheir focus. Their desire to obtain a GED diploma was temporarily supersededby their interest in meeting student needs through Council activities. Gracebelieved serving students through the snack bar was important because

when the students go out there [to buy lunch] and don’t come back, I feelthey lose an hour. So I felt it was important to be available for them. NowI know it is important, too, for myself.

As previously mentioned, however, she regretted not limiting her Council activi-ties to ensure sufficient time for her studies. Her experience with the snack barimpressed upon her the need to establish boundaries and avoid over-commitment:‘One problem that I have, like when I give myself, I give 100% and leave nothingfor myself. That is something that I have to change and that is something I havelearned’. Paradoxically, Council involvement redirected her focus to GED studies.Likewise, Carmita acknowledged that establishing the snack bar ‘was important’,but not ‘more important than working on my GED’. She considered the snack barimportant for a certain period of time and then shifted her focus to a more urgentconcern: finding a new job because her current job was slated for termination.The temporary closure of the snack bar and the students’ imminent employmentneeds redirected their aspirations to obtaining the GED credential, with the con-scious decision to limit their Council activities.

Adult educators’ role in guiding student involvement

The study also shows that to enable adult learners to manage academic and pro-gramme leadership endeavours, adult educators must both respect student lead-ers’ choices and provide guidance without undermining their positions as


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leaders. Joni, the director, thought the Council provided a ‘vehicle’ that gavestudents a ‘systematic voice’ in the programme and that although Councilinvolvement may have detracted from class time, it made the participants betterstudents. For instance, as Joni explained, the snack bar became a site of situatedcognition (Brown et al. 1989), enabling Council members to apply the skillsacquired in the classroom and other Council activities to practical problems:

Sometimes the teachers would complain because the student didn’t go toclass [due to Council activities], but I always argued that the learning thatwas taking place and them not going to class was probably more importantthan the learning that was going on in the class, although I didn’t say that[laughter]. They [students] created a budget for the cafe [snack bar]. Theyhad the capability. They had to do reading. They tutored people in thecafe. They had to write up the minutes. I think lots of literacy-in-contextwas happening. . .. I think that lots of learning took place, but it was situ-ated in particular projects and activity that was meaningful to them.

Her comments illustrate how student leadership can enhance academic pro-gress through informal and experiential learning. Just as inert concepts becomeuseful, transferable and robust through repeated practical application (Brownet al. 1989), the director posited that Council initiatives promoted learning byproviding students with opportunities to apply their knowledge and literate capa-bilities. She confirmed student perceptions that Council activities helped thembe ‘more assertive and more verbal’ as a result of developing leadership and lit-eracy skills.

However, Joni also concurred with the student leaders that navigation ofCouncil and academic responsibilities was ‘a balancing act’. She noted thatsnack bar management ‘interrupted’ Council members’ class attendance:

But those were also choices they made, too. If they would have said, ‘Youknow what, I am not working in the cafe and I am just going to class,’ Iwould support that. Nobody [on the staff] would say, ‘Oh of course not.’

When several Council members ‘complained’ about missing their class, Joniwould say:

‘Oh don’t worry. I will get someone to take your place so you don’t haveto be there [snack bar].’ [The students would respond,] ‘Oh, no, no, no. Ican do it.’ . . .So that is kind of a very strange contradiction. . .. I guess it isthe dichotomy of just [is] the learning happening in the classroom or islearning happening in the cafe? And in my mind it happens in all of thosesituations.

A challenge for educators, then, is knowing how to guide student leaderswhen their choices do not appear to maximise academic progress. When Coun-cil members rejected Joni’s offer to have other students manage the snack bar,she converted the snack bar into an informal classroom by having participantsset learning goals. Upon Joni’s recommendation, one Council member returnedto the classroom because she needed extra help. Joni also prohibited Council


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meetings during Sustained Silent Reading so that Council members would haveopportunities to read. As a supporter of situated holistic learning, Joni was opento promoting learning through student leadership activities. Yet, as noted ear-lier, Shammyann faulted the director’s support for students’ choice to persistwith time-intensive Council activities because some of those students did notobtain their GED diploma and no longer attended the programme.

Discussion

The findings suggest that involvement in the Council enhanced programmeeffectiveness by increasing student participation, by creating a sense of commu-nity among Council members and the student body and by meeting immediatestudent needs. Additionally, Council participation fostered self-esteem, collabora-tive action, conflict management, a sense of ownership and control over studentlearning and the ability to advocate for themselves and others. It also providedopportunities to develop, practise and adapt literacy and interpersonal skills inreal-life settings such as the snack bar. Furthermore, Council membershipexpanded students’ academic, vocational and personal goals. These findings sup-port the extant literature on the benefits of student leadership (Fingeret andJurmo 1989, Auerbach 1992, Campbell 2001). However, the study reveals that insome cases the complexity and variety of Council initiatives created time andenergy conflicts that hindered academic progress.

Insights from research on work-life balance (Crooker et al. 2002, Guess 2002)suggest that personal characteristics, the emotional benefits of Council involve-ment, the relative importance of the Council in the student’s life and limitedresources such as time, energy and health, shaped student perceptions of bal-ance or imbalance and their degree of investment. All of the Council membersbelieved the Council was important and that its success depended on ‘commit-ment’ and ‘teamwork’. This ethic of commitment and the time required for theeffective implementation of student initiatives spilled over into academic respon-sibilities and goals, chiefly by infringing on class time. In one sense, all of thestudents experienced spillover, as they used academic skills to implement Coun-cil responsibilities and activities.

Staines (1980) found that when two or more life domains are consideredequally important, conflict ensues over the assignment of limited time andenergy. Accordingly, the findings indicate that what students most valued—forinstance, obtaining a GED diploma or supporting Council activities—shapedtheir time management decisions. For example, although the programme struc-ture allowed ‘spillover’ Shammyann ‘segmented’ Council activities from aca-demic work because she deemed the latter most important. So when Councilmeetings infringed upon her class time, she perceived it as imbalance, or whatStaines (1980) termed ‘negative spillover’. Other students employed a ‘conflict’approach informed by the requirements of their Council position and theiravailable time and resources, as when Rolex resigned from the Council becausehis leadership responsibilities exceeded the time he was willing to commit.These examples echo Smith’s (2006) study showing that some adult learnersdesired to fulfil leadership roles but were unable to maintain the time andenergy required. Failure to recognise these constraints and students’ varied ways


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of resolving conflicts between programme leadership and academic pursuits maylead educators mistakenly to assume students lack motivation and willingness tofill leadership roles. Educators must also consider the life circumstances, such ashome and childcare commitments, that dictate student availability for leadershiproles and influence their academic progress. To help students evaluate what theycan realistically accomplish, educators should alert them to the time, energy andother resources that leadership will require (Smith 2006).

The study also suggests that students who are motivated by an ‘ethic ofcare’ (Tronto 1993) are likely to face conflicts between leadership and aca-demic activities. Because relationships and caretaking are central to their iden-tities, such individuals are prone to sacrifice themselves for others’ well-being.For example, Carmita played a mothering role for younger students and bothCarmita and Grace volunteered for the homeless or elderly and sacrificed classand study time for Council activities because they prioritised meeting studentneeds. Yet Council involvement also exacted personal costs such as neglectingto take care of themselves and delaying their GED studies. In contrast to thesemiddle-aged women, Shammyann, who is 26, did not consider serving studentneeds through Council activities her primary goal. Future studies should inves-tigate how a commitment to caring may inform learners’ decisions aboutinvolvement in programme leadership and resolution of related challenges,and how this ethic of care is related to learners’ age-differentiated gender soci-alisation, ethnic traditions, religious faith and social class norms (Tronto 1993,Skoe et al. 1996). For instance, under what conditions does student leadershipbecome another feminised—that is, unpaid and unrecognised—caretakingactivity?

Our findings suggest that leadership activities, whether motivated by an ethicof care or other factors, can become taxing if students have difficulty settingparameters, as illustrated by Grace’s experience. Sauve (2001: 25–26), for exam-ple, recommended ‘self-care’ for leaders in a participatory education pro-gramme because they ‘were so busy taking care of everyone else that they hadneglected to take care of themselves’. To prevent over-commitment and pro-mote self-care, practitioners should provide support such as helping studentleaders to establish boundaries, to monitor their time investment, and to decidehow and when staff can intervene.

Finally, the study highlights the difficulty of balancing guidance with supportfor learner choice and control (Campbell 2001). For instance, the director tookseveral steps to reduce the infringement of Council activities on student studytime, yet Council members rejected some of her recommendations. Instead ofimposing her suggestions, which would have risked learners’ development asleaders (Horsman 2001) and their engagement with the programme, Joni madethe cafe a site for informal learning, illustrating how educators can use creativestrategies that blend student leadership, student interests and literacy andnumeracy development. Educators and scholars also need to explore howstudent leaders can incorporate academic goals into leadership activities so thatthese pursuits complement rather than undermine each other.

In conclusion, this study suggests that a constellation of personal and pro-grammatic factors shapes whether student leadership supports or hinders aca-demic progress and whether learners perceive tension or congruence betweenthe two domains. Student leadership provides an array of personal, academic


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and programmatic benefits; however, when these initiatives demand extensiveresources, learners are challenged to meet academic and leadership responsibili-ties. In this case, student leaders made their decisions and managed theirresponsibilities based upon what they considered more important at the time,variously resulting in stress, realignment of student priorities, or conflict witheducators. By recognising the ways in which participatory leadership and adulteducation studies can reinforce or conflict with each other, educators can assistlearners to maintain balance between their multiple roles and identities.

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