Gender, culture, and personal experiences
that get in the way of learning: The need for core funding
for adult literacy projects

Diane Eastman
Brandon Friendship Centre, Brandon, MB

A policy paper presented to the Literacy Office, Department of Education, Government of Manitoba and Board Members, Brandon Friendship Centre

Over the last twelve months, I have had the opportunity to focus on my academic upgrading work at the Brandon Friendship Centre from three very different perspectives.

I have participated in a two-year national action research project sponsored by the Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women (CCLOW) and funded by the National Literacy Secretariat. With women from eleven other adult literacy and basic education programs across the country, I developed and implemented a woman-positive activity in my program. I facilitated a group of women students who rewrote, in clear language, a brochure outlining services for adults who had been sexually molested as children. As part of that research, I have been provided with resources to discuss and reflect on what happened with the women involved, with the other students, with the program, and with myself as a practitioner.

I participated in four week-long advanced training sessions for adult literacy practitioners organized by the Manitoba Literacy Office. During the time of this training, I facilitated a writing group of men and women students in order to examine what happened when I used formal, rather than experiential, approaches to student writing. My work in this course was strongly influenced by metacognitive - or meaning-making - approaches to learning and by the problem-posing teaching and learning philosophies of Paulo Freire.

I participated in a three-day workshop on Native Literacy Education sponsored by Okanogan College. During this workshop and through the writing assignment I completed later, I focused on the way in which academic programs can benefit from the introduction of cultural and life skills elements based on the individual and group needs of the students. These elements can become an integral part of academic programming through the use of theme units, but they cannot be pre-programmed through standardized curriculum or skills-based approaches.