Aging Literacies:
Training and Development Challenges for Faculty
Angela Crow
Learning Environments
Crow takes the position that setting is essential to the success of faculty development and training; hence, learning environments and learning networks not surprisingly act as the centerpiece of Chapter 7. Drawing on the scholarship of adult education, Crow’s coverage ranges from ergonomics to “individuals’ worries over job security” (p. 107). With regard to the latter, she points out that faculty “may feel the pressure to be efficient and effective in learning new material” and therefore might prefer emphasis on a “curiosity-driven” atmosphere that stimulates rather than intimidates participants (p. 109). On a related matter, in order to minimize the obstacles that can arise easily when faculty are treated like and think of themselves as novices, Crow proposes a training framework that builds on instead of ignores existing faculty expertise, which in her estimation makes much “more sense than separating technology training from their knowledge of writing instruction” (p. 109). Returning to some of her prior assertions, Crow restates a belief in the need to create spatial and temporal conditions that are “more conducive to people learning from one another” (p. 114).