The authors provide a clear critique of the “deficit model”, which sets out to identify deficits and develops curriculum to build skills. In contrast the approach promoted in Changing Paths honours the skills women bring to the classroom and focuses on capacity, rather than deficit:

It is an ongoing challenge to look beyond and move deeper into what may initially appear to be a problematic behaviour linked to lack of life skills. Limited interest in reading may be a smoke screen for shame, or not having money to purchase glasses. Lack of classroom participation may speak volumes about old messages that have battered a woman's self worth and self esteem with messages like "Don't talk stupid' or 'Be seen and not heard'. (Sochatsky & Stewart, undated: 12)

They use the image of a butterfly to show how the three different aspects of the program overlay and intersect with each other: Holistic (spiritual, physical, intellectual, emotional), Literacy (reading, writing, listening/speaking, thinking) and Lifeskills (self, family, community, work, education).

The authors also provide some essential advice to facilitators: avoid reminding women of trauma and abuse by reinforcing power relationships they have experienced elsewhere, and do not assume that we, as facilitators, know what they need — always, always ask.

The most powerful and healing experiences in the classroom have not come out of a lesson plan (but) as a result of developing a caring and trusting relationship with women. (p. 18)

In Motivating women offenders through process-based writing in a literacy learning circle, Stino and Palmer (1999) describe a participatory literacy learning circle employing process-based writing activities, offered to ten women who attended a GED^{Footnote 7} class in a residential treatment centre for adults and adolescents who had drug offences. A process-based approach to writing pays attention to the steps of writing, drafting, sharing and giving feedback among peers, rather than asking the learner to submit a final, “perfect” product.

An interesting aspect of this program is that the women used their own writing to produce a handbook for newcomers to the program to tell them what to expect in a correctional facility.

At the end of the program women felt better about themselves because of academic progress, because the book would benefit others and because the teacher cared for them and could guide them. Women who participated in the program also showed some improvement in reading and writing, although improvement in GED test scores were not significant (perhaps because it was too small a group and too short a course to show significant improvement).

The authors make a strong case for the benefits of process-based writing (as opposed to product-based): it improves skills, helps with coping, improves self-esteem and confidence, helps writers to express thoughts and feelings and to talk, write and read about their own lives. This is confirmed by Sochatsky and Stewart and by Deborah Morgan, who developed the Writing Out Loud program (Morgan, 1997, 2002).