As literacy workers and students engage in participatory practices they face frustrations, tensions, and roadblocks similar to the ones faced by the participants in this study. Packaged as a whole, these constraints could conceivably overwhelm literacy workers from engaging in participatory practices. Perhaps literacy workers and students may be more accepting of perceived failures if they view participatory literacy practices as a process that gradually evolves over time rather than as a product such as serving on the board or forming a student group. This means we need to challenge the production-oriented discourse which shapes our practice. We need to set aside time to discuss issues such as (a) "What does participatory practices mean?" (b) "What threatens and excites us?" and (c) "What are the benefits and the barriers of participatory practice?"

The findings indicated that identity politics play a pivotal role in the transformation or reproduction of power relationships between literacy workers and students. The question, 'Who are we in relation to the students and their issues?' needs to be posed by literacy workers so that they can recognize and explore their privileged positions in relation to that of the students. Arnold, Burke, James, Martin and Thomas (1991) state that "an unwillingness to recognize and learn about the role of social identity will ensure the perpetuation of power relations and will hold back the work of education for social change" (p.15). This means moving beyond the notion that 'we're all in this together' toward the recognition that the subject positions of educators and students are lodged in power. Also recognition that differences between these subject positions will affect the ways in which we actively interpret the word and the world and the ways in which we work together. We need to develop the capacity to see how our subjectivity-how we hear, how we speak, how we know-is lodged in social relations and shaped by discursive formations.

Opportunities need to be created so that literacy workers and students can collectively explore the questions of social identity and privilege, as it is difficult for literacy educators working in isolated setting to begin posing and reflecting upon these questions to themselves. We must realize that "deepening our consciousness about our social identity requires taking time, probing our own discomfort, risking frank discussion" (Arnold et al., 1991, p.15). Provincial literacy organizations could provide venues, study groups, and opportunities for workers to engage in a pedagogy that explores these issues.