An Inquiry Approach to Understanding Students’ Learning Goals in an Adult English for Speakers of Other Languages Classroom

This paper seeks to expand discussions about identifying students’ learning aspirations in adult English for Speakers of Other Languages classes in the United States. By critically examining the process of ascertaining students’ learning goals and dreams for the future in one adult ESOL class, the author explores how an inquiry approach to this process opened space for centering students in class learning design and the implications it has for complicating researchers’ understandings of forming curriculum around the reasons students expressed for coming to class. Utilizing data from a year-long practitioner inquiry project, the teacher–researcher offers a perspective on centering students’ dreams and goals as curriculum and the potential it has to augment discussions of student-generated curricula in an era of increased decentering of students’ perspectives in adult literacy education in the United States.