I Write Outside of Here: Adult Learners’ Writing Ecosystems and Experiences of Corrective Instructor Feedback

As U.S. institutions of higher education increase opportunities for adults to earn short-term, job-ready credentials, more learners will have access to college-level writing coursework without basic or developmental prerequisites.With this access comes the risk of corrective feedback on language use, a process that may be felt as painful or even violent.This article details findings from a study that explored how adult learners at a rural, open-access community college experience such feedback.Thirty students responded to focus group and interview questions about corrective feedback received in the context of first-year composition.Findings focus on participants' daily reading and writing practice, digital mediation of feedback, and the friends, family, and peers who support participant writing.These elements of adult learners' writing networks contribute to the framework through which learners experience feedback, perhaps explaining why participants' emotional experience of corrective feedback on their language use was not prominent in their discussion of feedback encounters.Implications exist for instructional design that leverages learners' existing practices and supports.This potential for negative experience with feedback on adult learners' language prompted me to study adult first-year writing students at a multi-campus, open-access community college in southwestern New York State.My IRB-exempted study used focus group methodology to explore the experience of corrective feedback with 30 community college students enrolled in first-year writing coursework.Though I posited that corrective feedback encounters might be experienced as a kind of violence against learners' identities, findings point to a nuanced experience for adult learners situated in a unique literacy network.