Introduction

Background to the research

This research continues my exploration of how violence affects learning and my search for effective approaches to support learning for those who have experienced violence. In my earlier research, I examined the impact of violence on women's learning and considered possible approaches for adult literacy programs to support learning for all (1997, 1999/2000, 2004). Following that study, I sought to find ways to implement changes to literacy programs (Horsman 2000, 2001a, 2001b, Morrish, Horsman & Hofer, 2002) and carried out further research to learn more about which discourses help and which hinder adopting such change in adult literacy programs (Heald & Horsman, 2000, Horsman, 2001c, Horsman, in press).

Through the current study, funded by the National Literacy Secretariat Department of Human Resources and Skills Development and sponsored by Parkdale Project Read, I sought to learn more about how violence affects learning by interviewing young people who are currently struggling with learning, either within or outside the school system. I wanted to explore how responses to trauma support or limit learning possibilities by interviewing young people and professionals engaged in the school system and in other education for youth. Parkdale Project Read hoped the study would give them guidance to support youth more effectively in their literacy program and to initiate new youth-focussed programming if they can obtain funding.

I began the study talking about my research and asking for input from students in various classes in a regular high school and an alternative high school. Although I handed out numerous invitations for students to talk to me further, only one approached me to talk briefly(1) . When I began to talk to out-of-school youth in a job training program, I followed their advice about what would encourage them to talk one-on-one and returned during class time, with my research assistant-a woman closer to them in age-to interview those who preferred to talk to her, and with a small honorarium for each interviewee. After these initial interviews, I worried that students who had little or no previous opportunity to speak about the violence in their lives and to reflect on how it had affected their learning might be unable to provide the detail and nuance I hoped for. Towards the end of the study, I came to see greater richness of insight in these accounts. They powerfully revealed the depth of silence and common difficulties in speaking about these issues. At the time, however, I decided not to continue in this vein.

(1) It was only after this student had left that I realized that she might have spoken to me further if I had immediately set up a time and place to meet. Other students in the schools might have been prepared to meet with me one-on-one if I had had an office in the school and been offering honorariums for interviews. By the time I had discovered the importance of these two factors I had already interviewed sufficient youth through after-school and job-training programs so didn't pursue this option.