workshop reports

What We Learned in the Yukon

The Yukon chapter of CCLOW, Yukon College and Health and Welfare Canada co-sponsored a one-day workshop on how violence interferes with a woman's ability to learn. Held during the College's annual professional development days, the workshop was also open to adult educators from outside Yukon College.

Focus and rationale of the workshop
The workshop focused on the experiences and needs of women learners who live with violence or the threat of violence on a daily basis. Such women have immediate and pressing safety concerns which take precedence over all other issues, including education. However, education may be a significant step in breaking a woman's isolation as well as her emotional and financial dependence upon her violent partner.

Goals of the workshop
We sought to:

• initiate a dialogue with adult educators, policy makers and funders of adult learners on the effects of violence on women's education;

• identify concrete ways in which the education system and those working within it can better support the needs of women survivors of violence.

Audience
The workshop was designed for college instructors, counsellors, policy makers and senior officials from Yukon College and the Yukon Department of Education as well as representatives from agencies which fund adult learners.

Format and content of the workshop
We included information sessions and both small and large group discussion. Case studies and exercises helped participants focus on this issue and enabled them to answer the following questions about violence and its impact on women's education.

• What is violence against women? What form does it take and how common is it?

• What are individual differences among adult learners and how might they be caused?

• What is wife abuse? What is the cycle of violence?

• How is this cycle experienced by the woman who is living with a violent man? How might she behave in a classroom? Are some of the individual differences among women learners actually the effects of violence?