Too Scared to Learn

Over the last few years I have been researching, writing and speaking about the impact of violence on learning. In 1996 and 1997, I travelled across Canada and interviewed literacy learners and workers, as well as therapists and counsellors for a research study. I wrote my first analysis of what I learned from this research in the discussion paper, But I'm Not a Therapist. During an on-line discussion of the issues raised literacy workers, educators, researchers and academics wrote comments and developed collective thinking about the issues. I incorporated many ideas posted on-line into the book: Too Scared to Learn: Women, Violence and Education. My current research builds on that study. At the outset I hoped my research would lead to changes in practice, this new study explores the process of change in literacy programs.

Making Change

For the current study I am working with Susan Heald (from the University of Manitoba). We are seeking to understand better what supports and what hinders making change in literacy programs so that they may more fully support learning for all women, and in particular, those who have experienced violence.

Our partners in this research are:

• Parkdale Project Read, Toronto, Ontario
• The Learning Centre, Edmonton, Alberta
• Malaspina University-College, Duncan, British Columbia
• World Education, Boston, New England

We asked different types of organizations to participate. Our contacts were programs that had been active participants in my earlier research, and programs we knew were planning to take on projects to address issues of violence. At Project Read, my local community program, I facilitated an intensive course that allowed women time to explore their lives and build their strengths as learners (1). I envisaged this course as an opportunity to put everything I had learned through the earlier research process into practice and see what would happen. I led the group with the support of a therapist. I met with her bi-weekly to discuss the work I was doing and to explore the value of a process of "supervision" like that regularly used by therapists. She also led occasional workshops with the group. A focus group at Parkdale Project Read which included all the staff allowed us to consider the impact of the intensive group on the whole program.

(1) This course, funded jointly by the National Literacy Secretariat and the Ontario Ministry of Colleges, Training and Universities, led to a manual of approaches and learning activities called Moving Forward. We are currently looking for programs interested in using the manual in their own setting and adding further activities and reflections to make it appropriate in a wide range of settings and communities.