The participants were drawn from the program according to one main criterion: they had to be currently participating—or had recently participated in—each of the three program settings. The reason behind the criterion was to ensure that the participants could discuss each of the settings in some detail. This kind of selection, although not thought about initially, also ensured that only the students who felt positively about the program participated in the study. The students who may not have shared this outlook would have expressed their dissatisfaction by refusing to participate in one of the three settings, and would have left the program. Subsequently, the participants in the study are those who had positive experiences and felt the program met their needs.

Although the eight student participants were enrolled in a unique literacy education program, they shared many of the same socioeconomic characteristics with students in other daytime literacy classes in large urban centres. The students attended the program during the day for 15 hours per week. Most were unemployed and received social assistance (general welfare, and disability), but wanted to find part–time or full–time employment. None of the students had attended a regular high school program in Canada, and all were learning literacy skills below a high school level. Some of the students were born in Canada and English was their native language; others were born in English-speaking countries and had later emigrated. The majority had immigrated to Canada from non–English speaking countries. These students were not considered to be English as a Second Language (ESL) students, and were often referred from ESL classes to the literacy program. For a non–native English speaker to participate in the class, they had to meet the following criteria: a proficient level of spoken English, an incomplete high school education in their native countries, and very little or no paid work experience in Canada and/or their native countries. There were also students enrolled in the program who had a developmental disability. Besides the eight student participants, each of the three program instructors also participated in the study. Biographies of the participants appear in the following chapter as part of the study's findings.

Access to the Site

I followed both informal and formal procedures to gain access to the program for research purposes. Informal procedures meant I had conversations with both managers and instructors to discuss the study and the roles of both the program and the people in it. During these discussions, the instructors and managers were encouraged to give their opinions about the study and suggestions regarding data collection (which will be detailed later). Formalized procedures were then followed, but only after I had received verbal approval from the program manager and instructors whose classes I would be entering during the study. Formal site access approval consisted of an email correspondence with the principal of continuing education and written approval from the school board's ethics committee (Appendix A).