One of the concerns around communication in learning that all practitioners experience is investigated by Johnson-Bailey and Cervero in Beyond Facilitation in Adult Education: Power Dynamics in Teaching and Learning Practices. They discuss concerns around the learner who dominates discussion whether it is in small groups or in the whole class setting. Focus groups of practitioners also identified this as a concern in group discussion situations. This is clearly one of those ‘discipline’ situations that every adult literacy practitioner faces. Successful approaches to dealing with this situation involve a recognition of and challenging the individual who tries to dominate to express the learning that s/he wants to demonstrate in acceptable form, such as further research leading to a ‘learned’ review.

A best practice around learner domination:

The learner who tends to dominate discussion should be challenged to demonstrate that learning in a way that will be of value in achieving the outcomes that s/he has identified.

4. Classroom Control

a. Positive Disruption: The disruption caused by the dominant learner who wants to speak on every topic is probably a positive disruption. This term refers to a disruption of the learning process of others by one or more individuals whose actions, while directly tied to achieving their identified learning outcomes, are disruptive to others’ achieving their learning outcomes. Practitioner and learner focus groups identified this person as an issue in classroom management. Both groups also recognized the need to stop the disruption without censuring the individual. A best practice tied to positive disruption:

As in 3c above, the learner(s) causing the positive disruption should be encouraged, through alternative learning assignments, to channel that energy toward achieving their identified outcomes.

Approach: If the positive disruption is a single learner, that individual can be removed from the disruptive situation by individual assignment to be completed outside the classroom. If the positive disruption involves more than one, a project demanding cooperation and collaboration might achieve learning outcomes for both and remove the disruptive influence in the classroom.