A curve was thrown my way in the course of my study when I was in a strike position for work and expected to picket in the area neigbouring this community. Remaining cognizant of my ongoing need to negotiate social situations, I willingly offered to travel to the next town to help the smaller number of union members in their hospital as a way to reduce my risk of having my identity as a government worker disclosed.

Family Participants

The primary caregivers were the main source of data. They were all English speaking, resided in a low-income neighbourhood and had at least one child enrolled in the targeted grade 1, 2 or 3 Core French classes. The use of purposive sampling helped to uncover the full array of "multiple realities relevant to this inquiry" (Borg & Gall, 1989, p. 386), while allowing for the possibility of a few participants discontinuing their participation. I gave pseudonyms to each of the participants to protect their identities without detracting from the richness of the description of the outcomes. Originally, I wanted the participants to choose their own names. However, after several parents picked the same names from characters portrayed on popular television soap operas, I decided to randomly assign names from my list. Chapter 4 contains details on the family participants.