Participatory Literary Practices / Paulo Freire's Approach

According to Collins (1995), a central theme of Participatory Literacy Practices is to ignore conventional curriculum parameters enabling participants to express themselves.

Despite the overt, and perhaps overly optimistic, revolutionary implications of Paulo Freire's approach to literacy, his problem-posing pedagogy can be instructive for teachers in prisons. ... It is through Participatory Literary Practices in community-based settings and some educational institutions that the closest approximations to Freirean pedagogy have emerged. A central tenet of Participatory Literacy initiatives is that students, together with their teachers, will have a say in the formation of a curriculum and the selection of relevant texts. Accordingly, the "voices" of the learners and their life stories become primary material for the learning process. Literacy in these terms is not so much about focusing on the need to read as on attending to the needs of people who cannot read(p. 60).

Stony Mountain Institution

The school at Stony Mountain Institution provided an example of the influence of Participatory Learning Practices. Given the fact that student turnover is lower, it teachers have more time to entertain special projects which are influenced by students. One example of this is the students' work to compile and publish a book of visual art, poetry and stories entitled "Spirit Within Our Dreams." This attractive book was compiled largely by prisoners which gave them direct influence on the content of their curriculum. Notably, students at Stony Mountain took the lead in setting up the classroom for the Focus Groups and directing the focus group discussion.

Summary of Models

Prison teachers are individuals first and each of the classrooms was "flavoured" by the uniqueness of the teachers. Teachers, too, are influenced by their own philosophical premises which help to determine style, content and delivery. The above comparisons of prison school programs to Collins' paradigm of prison education are offered not as definitive but as influential. In reality, school programs in prison need to be functional. In part, they depict how the micro can be influenced by the macro.