Regular attendance was not gender-marked in this study. Three of the regular attenders were men; four were women. However, all of the regular attenders, except Doris, were Canadian born of European heritage. This makes Doris, a First Nations student, somewhat exceptional; therefore, her comments and circumstances, especially with reference to resistance, are of special interest to this study.

Resistance and Attendance Compared

I observed many examples of resistant behaviour during the course of this study. While most students exhibited at least some resistant behaviour, each student had a particular pattern of resistant behaviours. As well, certain resistant behaviours were easier for the teachers to recognize, value and work with. In the discussion that follows I will compare student resistant behaviours with the student attendance patterns in this ABE program, which are summarized in the three tables below. Table 1 (see p.97) represents the total number of resistance behaviours for each student. Table 2 (see p.98) shows the number of resistance behaviours that were observed and Table 3 (see p.99) shows the number of resistance behaviours that were noted during interviews. The students are grouped according to attendance pattern.

In this section I examine the relationships that exist between student resistant behaviours and student attendance. I examine the resistant behaviours of those who dropped out of the ABE program, those who attended sporadically, and those who attended regularly, looking for commonalties among these attendance groupings of students in terms of resistant behaviours.