This collaborative, community-based research explores
the role of narrative in adult literacy practice, considering
the context of students and facilitators listening to each other
across multiple social differences, such as race, class and educational
level. Self-reflection
by practitioner-researchers highlights how practitioners’ stories
shape their practice. Using
journaling and simple arts-based methods to prompt reflexivity
and story-telling, practitioner-researchers examine moments of
discomfort and complexity which arise in their teaching, uncovering
potential and challenge at the intersection of narrative practises
and how we listen and learn across difference. This research
identifies a process which makes honest self-reflection and
more inclusive ways of working possible.
Oral and written communication, often in story form, are at
the heart of community-based literacy practice.Yet, within this
tradition of literacy work is a conundrum: not all stories are
heard the same way. Between the telling of literacy stories
and the hearing of these stories there is the possibility for
learning, but also the possibility of silence and shame.
How educators and learners hear and take up each other’s
stories depends on our understanding of the role of story and
of the shifting, complex terrain of the differences between us.
In the literacy field, practitioners and learners work together
across huge social differences, particularly of educational level
and class, and very frequently of race. When literacy practitioners
begin to focus on issues of diversity we discover that using
stories is not so simple or necessarily safe for all learners.
There is a dearth of anti-racist, equity-based research about
adult literacy, particularly in Canada. Moriarty (2007),
in “Reflections on Becoming White, or Avoiding the Button
Factory” begins to explore the Canadian literacy context. She
describes her working-class roots in Ireland, looks at the conceptions
of skill, training, and work which shape the literacy field, and
points out how rarely these concepts are examined in terms of race,
class, and gender. Issues of equity and social difference
need to be at the centre of literacy research.
Over the past year, a community-based research project has been
investigating how adult literacy practitioners understand and
use narrative, implicitly and explicitly, in their work with
adult learners. To understand more about the complexities and
possibilities of using narrative when working across multiple
differences we have explored the ways that our own stories shape
our practice.
Our team of nine has extensive experience in adult literacy
practice and research. Five practitioner-researchers work at two community-based
adult literacy programs in Toronto: Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood
Centre and Parkdale Project Read. The team also includes an adult
literacy librarian from AlphaPlus Resource Centre and three researchers
now affiliated with OISE/UofT who have many years of frontline
experience. While some researchers have been co-workers
since the 1980s, others have met more recently. The long connections
as practitioner and research colleagues has made the honest
sharing and trust possible.
What we did
The research team used a recurrent focus group process and simple
arts-based activities to facilitate our inquiry over several months.
Our initial research questions were:
- How are personal narratives used, formally and informally,
in literacy programs? How do practitioners experience
and/or understand these situations?
- How do practitioners hear and understand learners and each
other across multiple social differences? How do these
dynamics either support or stifle literacy learning?
- How can literacy practitioners learn to work with story to
foster more possibilities for learning?
To create trust, safety and a space for openness, the facilitators
used ritual, including formal openings and closings. Allowing time
to think and draw before speaking also helped participants be more
reflective. The group used active listening which made it possible
for people to speak and believe that what they say will make sense,
even when ideas feel half-formed.
What we are learning
Our research focused on practitioners’ moments of discomfort
working with learners where we were not sure what to do or were
struck with the differences between us. Such moments often do not
get explored in our daily work lives, but the complexity of these
moments of tension has much to teach us. While we expected to explore
how teaching methods using story telling do, and do not, produce
silence and shame, we have begun by examining moments of our own
silence and shame as practitioners.
Thus far we have learned about the value of working with practitioners’ awareness
of themselves, the complexity of their identities as teacher-facilitators,
program coordinators and administrators, and as people who are
able to share some of their identity with learners and keep other
parts hidden. We have explored our individual educational
histories, and become more aware of how they are entwined with
our family and cultural history.
Literacy facilitators need open reflective time to exploring
who we are as practitioners and how our own social locations
and histories are entwined with how we do literacy work. This
research has given us opportunities to ask who are we and what
are we doing. In this kind of reflection we learn from the challenges,
probe what happens in practice, and get clearer about what is
happening to ourselves, thereby making space to be more reflective
about what we are hearing and seeing in our interactions with
learners. When we attend to these sites of complexity, neither
ignoring them or becoming paralyzed by them, we create the potential
to use narrative as a source of energy and growth.
Our reflections are leading to an understanding of what time,
resources and teaching strategies practitioners need to be able
to use stories appropriately in cross-cultural situations. We begin
to discover strategies and conditions which will help practitioners
and learners better hear each other across such differences as
race, class, and educational level. Finally, the research has identified
a process that allows practitioners to truly do the work of honest
self-reflection that allows them to work in different, more inclusive,
ways.
References
Moriarty, M. (2007). “Reflections
on Becoming White, or Avoiding the Button Factory” in Literacies, 7,
21-22.
Members of Research Team
Tannis Atkinson – Literacies
Mary Brehaut, Andy
Noel, Nadine Sookermany – Parkdale Project
Read
Guy Ewing, Sheila Stewart – Festival of Literacies,
OISE/UT
Sally Gaikezhenyongai, Michele Kuhlmann – Davenport
Perth Neighbourhood Centre
Maria Moriarty – Centre
AlphaPlus Centre
This research is sponsored by the Research and Knowledge Mobilization
Office of the Canadian Council on Learning, a national, non-profit,
independent organization committed to improving learning for all
Canadians.
Download PDF
back to archives
