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High school equivalency (GED) is a recognised alternative to a high school diploma in the United States. It offers an opportunity to a range of disadvantaged adult learners such as school dropouts, refugees etc. to attain an educational certificate enabling them to move on in their life.
This presentation is based on a co-authored article (with Zachary Parker, Daisy Shetterly and Kimberly Valle) that presents an autoethnographic case study of a non-profit HSE programme in Philadelphia during the COVID-19 pandemic. The four authors, all of them instructors on the front line of the youth crisis in adult education, explore the broader context of non-governmental organisation (NGO) management and privatised HSE exams.
In their research and their reflections, they found that the pandemic exacerbated existing economic and social inequalities, with both pre-pandemic and current delivery of their HSE programme failing to address the survival needs of a population which has long been living in crisis. Juxtaposing relevant youth-in-crisis literature with narratives both from before the pandemic and whilst living through it, the article discusses the funding and institutional constraints around the environment in which they teach.
The presentation will also reflect on the limits of collective autoethnography, and the possibility for political resistance, which was stymied by ongoing staff turnover, managerial dysfunction, and teacher burnout.
Speaker
Isaiah Zukowski is a PhD student in Lifelong Learning and Adult Education at Pennsylvania State University. His area of research interest concerns the role of high school equivalency within the contexts of mass incarceration and NGO-ization. Before teaching GED, he coordinated adult services at an LGBT community center and taught as a Fulbright scholar in Tunja, Colombia.