For adults who turn to adult education centers to prepare for high school equivalency tests, the instruction is typically narrow and tailored to standardized testing.
This methodology mimics teaching seen in K-12 and doesn’t resonate with a lot of adult learners, who likely never saw the classroom as a place where they belonged. There are many adults who come to adult education programs with negative memories and past trauma associated with formal schooling.
Rachael Gruen
Acknowledging this, some states are looking at alternative pathways to earning an HSE credential. A popular emerging option is a pathway that includes a transcript showing course completion. With this model, adult educators can construct problem-based lessons to show competency across literacies. By removing the pressure of standardized tests, instructors can build classrooms that are more welcoming and effective for adults with past trauma.
The idea of using multimodal play to achieve this was studied by Rachael Gruen of The Ancona School in Chicago. Multimodal play comes from the idea of multiliteracies. It is unscripted and refers to the idea that there is a continuous changing process for how we read, write, view, listen, compose, and communicate information. It allows learners to play with their ideas and make connections with different literacies using resources around them—photos, videos, music, a museum, cooking, sewing, and more.
Multimodal play helps learners reframe how they learn as well as the learning environment, because learning is no longer focused on the standardized assessment. Through her study of multiple adult learners who had negative experiences and trauma with past education, Gruen developed new insights about multimodal play as a pathway to developing the competencies needed to receive an HSE diploma. Among her insights:
Educators can better meet the needs of learners through multimodal play when they can give the learners control of the content and mode of instruction. Specifically, sharing personal stories with others puts learners in charge of their choices.
Multimodal play allows for unscripted moments in which learners build connections with each other. Not only does this help adults view classrooms as a welcoming place, but it also creates a new way of learning and building competencies through peer collaboration.
At the end of her study, Gruen saw that the participants seemed encouraged about education. They were able to take control of their past trauma, process it, and heal. She sees value for HSE programs to incorporate multimodal play as a way to engage more learners by building a stronger sense of meaning within competencies.
Gruen’s full study, “‘You Don’t Know What I Went Through’: Adult Learners Healing Through Multimodal Play,” was published in our Adult Literacy Education research journal.