The decision to include learners' names as an option was based on a number of discussions. Staff from PPR had experience with this issue as a result of practitioner research work done at PPR by Jenny Horsman. (Horsman, 2000) PPR believes in the importance of honoring people's wisdom by including their names if they choose, rather than assuming that the most respectful approach is always hiding people's identity, as is more usual in academic research. Others from our research team weren't as comfortable with the idea of using learners' real names. Some were concerned about the vulnerability of learners that put their trust in us as staff and researchers. We were all aware of the power relationship that is present when we ask learners to take part in focus groups or in sharing personal information with us.

In the end, we decided to leave this decision to each learner, bearing in mind it was very important to be careful how we use the information that was shared with us. We acknowledged the need to always reflect on how the individual might feel when they read the report or the magazine. We included learners in every step of the process, right up to the final product by asking them to review their words in:

• the focus group summaries
• the draft article of the magazine
• the final report to funders

E. Power and privilege

This project generated key insights into the dynamics of power and privilege. We believe the project team's experience with and reflections on these questions provide a major learning opportunity for the adult literacy research community and will help serve as a road map for novice practitioner researchers. Consequently we have given considerable attention to this issue in our report.

Issues of power disparities inherent in research are complex, making both discussions and finding solutions difficult. We struggled with two related issues:

• the gap between the information we intended to collect about the cultural/racial background of learners in the focus groups, and the data we did collect
• our own position and identity and how these factors impact the research process

In our initial research team meeting, we acknowledged that the power relationship between researchers and participants was biased in favor of the researcher. We, for example, control the direction of the interview. Participants' words are shaped by the questions posed to them. We discussed how learners might feel the need to tell us what they think we want to hear and how we might address this notion. Ensuring that learners' words were authentic, unaltered and used without exploitation was also key throughout the process.

Power relationships arose again at the analysis stage concerning the impact of cultural background. In our initial planning meeting, we felt it was important to identify who was part of this research. We reviewed what information was needed for the learner profiles, and decided to collect the following basic demographic data: age, gender, literacy level at entrance, length of time in the program, and cultural/racial background. We also decided to include the same demographic information about ourselves in the facilitator profiles in the focus group summaries.