The Setting

After I had chosen an ethnographic approach I approached my friend Kit², who teaches in the ABE program of Main Community College at the Dover campus, and asked her whether I could conduct this study in her ABE class. She agreed and after several weeks of presentations to and approvals from the institutions involved, I began my observations. I include here a description of the research setting in order to provide an orientation and context for the research findings.

This description will fix the study's findings firmly in the particular context that produced them by providing a sense of the community formed by the institution, the ABE program and the classrooms, as well as the population from which students were drawn.

The study was conducted at a small satellite campus, one of five satellite campuses, attached to a large Vancouver Island community college. The college is referred to as Main College in this study and the satellite campus, which is a forty minute highway drive from Main College, is referred to as Dover campus. The relationship between Main college and Dover campus appeared to be strained at the time of the study. There were "teachers' lounge" discussions among the teaching and administrative staff concerning their dissatisfaction about the perceived lack of local control for Dover campus.