Community of Inquiry

Reflecting critically to improve practice by Cheryl Brown

Inside this issue: Reflecting Critically by Cheryl Brown Addressing barriers A learner’s response Shift in perspective Research in action Enhancement of online resources by NALD Teaching reading to adults by Pat Campbell Discovery leads to renewal. Special points of interest: · 56% of learners who leave upgrading programs do so for socio-economic reasons. · 60% of learners with children cite child care conflicts as a factor in deciding not to enroll in programs. · Literacy is embedded in tasks that we perform everyday. · Adults across all reading levels can analyze, summarize, and synthesize text information and make inferences.

When I started working as an adult literacy facilitator, research was the farthest thing from my mind. I was fortunate to spend my ‘formative’ professional development years in an environment where critical reflection and ongoing training was the norm. I was challenged to self-reflect continually and change my practice based on the needs of learners. If one method wasn’t successful or effective, I tried another and another until there was success. I read, asked more experienced facilitators and dug deep into my creative system for solutions.

It wasn’t until I met Dr. Pam Whitty and Pam Nason, from the Early Childhood Centre at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, that I began to get notions that what I was doing was actually research. I was part of a team in Saint John that was involved in their research project called: E/Merging Literacies of Home, Family and Community: Valuing the Work of Family Community Literacy Workers. This project documented the literacy practices of Early Intervention, the Family Resource Centre, Community Literacy Practitioners and Teacher Educators. We were participants as well as investigators, and we had conversations that shifted my perspectives. I was able to see that the process I engaged in to improve my practice was a form of research, and equally, that engaging in research was instrumental to improving my practice.

As an adult literacy coordinator, I had noticed that very few parents of preschool aged children attempted to upgrade their skills, usually waiting until their children were in school. Those that did enter into programs found considerable difficulty staying long enough to reach their goals. ABC Canada’s National Study (Long & Middleton, 2001) stated that 56% of those who left upgrading programs did so for socio-economic reasons, among them family responsibilities and childcare issues. Of respondents with children, more than 40% of women and close to 20% of men cited childcare conflicts as a factor in deciding not to enroll in a literacy program. Discovery leads to renewal.

Addressing barriers

My colleague, Wendell Dryden, and I co-developed a program that would have on-site childcare and transportation to address the barriers of parents with preschoolers and to see if we would be successful in attracting and retaining these learners. We discovered that there are more things than childcare and transportation that keeps parents of preschoolers from accessing upgrading and reaching their learning goals. One of the barriers to continued participation is program attendance policies. In many adult literacy programs, there is an 80% or 90% attendance policy. If a learner has a hard time maintaining this, often the conclusion is that they are not ready to come to the program. At one point during the program, there were four families absent for more than a week for health reasons. We had a discussion about this as program staff. We discussed what would happen if we adhered to our conventional thinking about attendance; we would be talking with parents about leaving the program. Instead we chose to ask: “Do families with preschool children need more support to attend and continue in the program? Do we need to do more outreach? Do we need to support families by bringing them materials they can work on at home until they can come back”?

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