Similarly, Dunlap and Goldman (1990, 1991, 1993) explain that a facilitative power system is power through others and is rooted in interaction and negotiation. Their research focus is on facilitative power systems operating within school programs and activities that they see as examples of reform and restructuring of education. One of their aims is to show the power sharing and the skills involved in order help direct school administrators who are experimenting with alternate forms of decision-making with teachers. Their research examined six examples of commonly operating programs or activities that exist in most school districts. This included cooperative learning as a teaching technique, thematic multi-disciplinary curricula, and community and alternative public schools. The characteristics of a facilitative power system are site-based management, decentralized decision-making, teacher autonomy, and a curriculum that is uniquely responsive to the people it serves. These characteristics serve as one of the frameworks of analysis of the Reading and Writing Centre.

Facilitative power implies a facilitator or leader who works to form web-like relationships amongst people and resources. Criticisms of this power system are that it is a somewhat benevolent form of the traditional form of power, that of power over others. Critics suggest that facilitative power is "a concept that largely depends on the degree of consonance existing between the administrator's views and those of the followers" (Rees 1999:34).

Power discourse and conceptions of power can help shift how we look at what we do and how we use power. This thesis suggests that the roles and power dynamics amongst teachers and students in adult literacy education are shaped through the conceptions of literacy itself. In this next section I explain my use of social literacy theory and look at how it can work to make power more visible within literacy education.

Literacy Discourse

Power is integral to conceptions of literacy. Researchers have developed an extensive body of literature regarding the ways unequal arrangements of power are produced, reproduced and maintained within our society and within educational institutions. Dominant perceptions within literacy discourse, such as individualism and deficit thinking, are one way this happens. There is an emphasis on the need to make power visible because "literacy that obscures the power relations inscribed in its construction ultimately disempowers" (Crowther, Hamilton and Tett 2001:3). According to Freire (1976) and Lankshear (2002), the central role in literacy education is to ask questions regarding the inequalities within society and the power inequalities within teacher/student relationships. This study operates from that premise of questioning.