"Education is the Key to Every Door: Narratives of Immigrant Adult Basic Education Learners

Adult Basic Education (ABE) is a broad concept that aims at educating adults with low education. Immigrant ABE learners comprise a significant portion of the adult learners’ population who seek education through enrolling in ABE programs. These learners have experienced different learning environments due to their social life process and are motivated to make changes in their social status for a better life. Therefore, it is critical to understand their learning needs through their learning and educational experiences in order to develop an inclusive ABE learning environment. The purpose of this narrative study was to understand immigrant ABE learners’ experience in an ABE setting from a post-critical lens. The three research questions that guided this study were “How do immigrant ABE learners describe their educational experience prior to their enrollment in ABE?”, “How do immigrant ABE learners describe their learning experiences?”, and “How do immigrant ABE learners describe the role of education in changing their life situations?”The study was conducted in an ABE organization that offered HiSet preparation classes. The research data were collected through two sets of interviews with six immigrant ABE learners. Another source of the study data was the researcher’s field notes. While each participant’s process inspired certain key observation about their learning experiences, five themes were generated regarding their shared perspectives toward learning and education. They all experienced interrupted educational processes, held low socioeconomic status both in their home countries and in the US, perceived literacy in terms of learning English, had different learning experiences in different learning environments, and advocated the transformative power of education. The findings of this study suggest that the immigrant ABE learners seek to get educated in order to change their social status in terms of having a high income job and support their communities. Learning English would significantly facilitate this process for them, as it empowers them to communicate effectively in the American context.