Completed Projects
Make it Real:
Participatory Action Research with Adult Learners (2006)
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In this report, Dee McRae explores what she describes as a powerful and meaningful approach to learning for learners and for practitioners. Participatory Action Research projects, Dee argues, can increase learners’ personal agency through facilitated group decision-making processes. While being respectful of learners’ realities these projects also foster skills and capacities that allow learners to explore, expand and negotiate their world.
Catching Our Breath:
Collaborative Reflection-on-Action in Remote-Rural BC (2006)
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In this report, Anne Docherty describes what she calls the balancing act of contradictions that many practitioners in remote-rural and aboriginal communities are embedded in. Anne argues that collaborative reflection-on-action offers practitioners a socially, culturally and economically shaped space to reflect on their practice away from the hurriedness of their daily tasks. This collaborative space allows practitioners to look at themselves as participants in learning relationships, thus activating the potential for individual and collective change.
From Concrete to Abstract: The Benefits of Using a Guided
Reflective Writing Technique with Adult Literacy Students
(2006)
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In this report, Leonne Beebe explores how a writing activity that involves reflection and evaluation offers opportunities for learners to experience writing about course and personal content and about interactions with other students and with the teacher.
Walking Alongside:
Youth-Adult Partnerships in Making Change (2006)
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In this report, Melanie Sondergaard looks at the challenges faced by an adult working to promote active youth citizenship. Melanie’s project focuses on how an adult can support marginalized youth to make change in their community. She argues that adults need to foster and sustain a learning process where youth can experience and explore what it takes to be a change agent.
See Me: Use of Personal Narrative in the Classroom (2006)
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In this report, Paula Davies examines one teaching strategy, the use of narrative in the classroom. Paula argues that the use of students’ personal narratives in the classroom is a valuable teaching strategy because it facilitates the students’ understanding of specific course content, it enhances their engagement with classmates, class activities and course content and it creates a classroom community. These developments enrich the learning experience because they allow students to be seen. Being seen means that each student is valued as an individual, that his or her culture, background, personal history and personal knowledge is acknowledged and has a place in the classroom.
Accessing Community Resources from the Learners' Perspective (2004)
This action research project mapped the support and services for adults and younger adults returning to school in Houston and Hazelton, two communities in northwest British Columbia. For more information contact Dee McRae dmcrae@thehub.literacy.bc.ca or Anne Docherty adocherty@upperskeena.ca
Hardwired for Hope: Effective ABE/Literacy Instructors (2004)
http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/hwired/cover.htm
Five long-time adult basic education instructors investigate what makes an effective instructor by examining their own practice and interviewing other practitioners.
Dancing in the Dark: How Do Adults with Little Formal Education Learn? How Do Practitioners Do Collaborative Research? (2003)
http://www.nald.ca/ripal/Resourcs/dark/ cover.htm
This research project examines two questions. In the first, "How do adults with little formal education learn?" the researchers look at people who did not complete grade 12 but who learn every day in order to get on with their lives. In the second, "How do literacy practitioners do collaborative research?" the researchers look at how four literacy practitioners, with no formal education in research, carry out a collaborative literacy research project.
Literacy for Women on the Streets (2003)
http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/litforwm/cover.htm
Two literacy workers led this participatory action research project at the Women's Information and Safe House (WISH) in the downtown eastside of Vancouver. Their report challenges myths and stereotypes about the desire and ability to learn among women who work in the sex trade.
Incarceration to Inclusion: Looking at the Transition from Correctional Facility Programs to Community Based Adult Education (2002)
http://www.scsa.ca/resources.html
This study examines the barriers to transition from correctional facility programs to community-based adult education in northwest BC, and ways in which these barriers could be addressed.
Naming the Magic: Non-Academic Outcomes in Basic Literacy
(2001)
Non-academic changes in the lives of learners are an important, but often unacknowledged, aspect of literacy work. This report describes six techniques for documenting non-academic outcomes and how they came about. The techniques were developed, refined and field-tested by ABE instructors.
Literacy-Based Supports for Young Adults with FAS/FAE (2000)
This study examines the use of literacy-based supports (support circles, cognitive compensatory tools, and cognitive enhancement tools) in the lives of five young adults with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome/Fetal Alcohol Effects (FAS/FAE), ranging in age from 16 to 34 years.
Literacy in Isolation: An Assessment of the Literacy Needs of Oil & Gas Camp Workers in the Fort St. John Area: Research Report (2000)
This study examines the literacy needs of oil and gas camp workers in isolated work camps in the Fort St. John area and explores the types of programs that could be implemented to meet the literacy needs of these workers.
Making Connections (2000)
http://www2.literacy.bc.ca/learners/makingcn/Jan01/1.htm
This newsletter describes an action research project that asked: How do we build and maintain connections among learners?
