SITE AND PARTICIPANTS

A final defining feature of this case study was that it was particularistic. This refers to the "focus on a particular situation, event, program, or phenomenon" (Merriam, 2001, p. 29). The employment preparation program provided a unique approach to literacy education in that it combined distinct learning settings: a traditional classroom, on–site employment training, and an off–site employment placement. In the classroom setting, students were primarily engaged in activities about literacy; they did spelling, grammar, math, and writing to help them develop the literacy skills that they used in the program, in the community, and at home. The on–site employment training was a coffee shop, operated by the staff and students. The coffee shop was open three mornings per week for about 90 minutes, and drew its customers from the other programs in the building, such as ESL classes and other training programs. The third learning setting experienced by the students in the employment preparation program was an employment placement located in the community. (Greater details of each of the three settings will be presented in the next chapter.) This combined approach was unique and permitted an analysis of the students' perceptions of learning and literacy as they were engaged in activities in each of the three settings.

There were also reasons based on the conceptual framework of the study that this particular program was chosen. The underlying premise of situated learning is that human learning is social and occurs when the learner engages in the social practices of daily life. It was important to find a program that helped students bring learning out of the classroom and into real–life situations. The employment preparation program had the coffee shop, in which students had an opportunity to develop skills in a controlled real-life setting, and the job placements, which were real–life settings. It was also important to choose a program that did not have structures, such as a prescribed curriculum, that could unduly suppress the social nature of learning. The program needed to be an environment that encouraged interaction and group learning as opposed to individualized instruction and independent learning in order to fully explore the sociocultural nature of learning and literacy.

Finally, the site was also chosen for personal reasons. I have worked with the school board that runs the program for over ten years, and participated in the initial development of the employment preparation program. I knew the instructors and students in the program, and thought this would ease data collection. I also continued to work at the same site as the program during the study, and this choice, although not always easy, helped to strengthen the study. The day–to–day reality of program development informed my theoretical thinking and, in turn, theoretical ideas helped to move along the development of the employment preparation program and the general literacy program.