Finding others who were seeking to find ways to do this work was crucial to many in the on-line discussion - together we were creating new discourses that began to write issues of violence into the literacy frame. I believe that when we come to see the ways that particular discourses shape our thinking - especially those we are so steeped in we may initially have trouble seeing, because they just reveal "the way it is" - then we become more able to create or participate in alternate, resistant discourses which may open possibilities for new practices.

Seeing our language and practices as discourse offers a tool to get outside a focus on what is "right" and draws attention to examining how certain discourses open and close possibilities. Such an analysis points us to notice our own language closely and explore its implications. In our research focus groups, we invited everyone to become collaborators with us in noticing our language and how it shapes our practice. Susan Heald and I wrote a first paper: Rethinking Violence and Learning: Moving Research into Practice (5) exploring the discourses we were beginning to see as blocking change and then used the paper as the basis for further discussion in focus groups for everyone to modify and add to our picture of the discourses and how they work.

(5) This paper was presented at the Canadian Association for Studies in Education conference in Vancouver, June 2000. It is posted on their web site and at www.jennyhorsman.com. I will not repeat the arguments presented there in this paper, but will summarize the discourses explored.