The College of New Caledonia in Prince George, British Columbia, has 3,000 students. Academic upgrading has 285 full-time and 300 part-time students, some of whom work one-to-one with volunteer tutors. The coordinator of this program and an instructor from the English as a Second Language program decided to team teach a writing group separate from the core program at the college. Paula Davies and Mary Ann Tierney wanted to find out what happened when they consciously brought woman-positive activities into the classroom. Their difficulty identifying and working with these activities led them to an exploration of how they, as feminists, do their work. They wrote an article, "More than semantics: Reflections on 'feminist' 'woman-positive' practices in a literacy classroom," that includes four other women's commentaries on their work. They also facilitated a workshop, "Making the classroom positive for women," at the BC Adult Basic Education Conference in early 1993.

At the Cowichan Campus of Malaspina College in Duncan, British Columbia, 300 students are enrolled in the Adult Basic Education division. There are eight full-time staff, five of them women. Two of the instructors, Kate Nonesuch and Vicki Noonan, proposed that the Fundamentals English program be divided into two classes along sex lines instead of along ability lines. For the twelve hours of English each week, one would teach a men-only class and the other would teach a women-only class. They developed a proposal approved by the administration. At the time, there were twelve women and twelve men in the classes. Eight of the men and five of the women were First Nations students and three women were Chinese-speaking immigrants. When the class discussed the idea two white men dominated the discussion, speaking very angrily against the proposal. One woman and one man spoke briefly in favour and others were silent. They decided to vote after a break and the proposal was defeated. The two instructors went on to team-teach the two classes that continued as they had before, divided on the basis of ability.

Research background, methodology, and design

For the last fifteen years, the Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities, for Women (CCLOW) has advocated for adult literacy policies, programs, practice, and materials that meet the needs of women in the context of their communities and their everyday lives. Working on its own and in coalition with other organizations, the national organization and its networks have represented the particular concerns of adult women students and staff.

In January 1990, eight women from across Canada spoke by teleconference with Aisla Thomson, Executive Director of CCLOW. In the first of many meetings, they discussed different possibilities for a study on women's experience in literacy I programs. They wanted to find out how gender affects women's experiences in literacy programs, how those experiences could be improved, and how they could share what they found out with others. These eight women formed an advisory committee for the research. Betty-Ann Lloyd was hired to explore the experiences of women in adult literacy and basic education programs and to develop a national participatory research proposal that would examine how those experiences could be improved.