Literacy and violence relationships

The author of this document teaches communications courses in an academic upgrading program at a college in Toronto, Ontario. She has also researched and written about the impact of violence on the capacity to learn, and is particularly interested in the effects of anxiety on learning.

This is a set of six information sheets, designed for adult literacy practitioners, on learning and violence. In general terms, all six sheets deal with the prevalence of violence and how its effects on individuals may be manifested in a classroom.

The Work and Learning Knowledge Centre (WLKC) of the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) partnered with Canadian Policy Research Networks (CPRN) to convene a series of roundtables — in Toronto, Halifax, Yellowknife and Edmonton — on employer investment in workplace learning,involving senior government officials and senior representatives from business, labour, colleges/universities, Aboriginal organizations and NGOs from a particular province,

Recent research into violence and learning has revealed that violence is a reality for all individuals in society including learners in adult literacy programs and that violence has a negative impact on learning. As educators, literacy workers have a responsibility to acknowledge that violence exists in society and to promote an educational model that has peace and respect for diversity at its core.

For the last fifteen years, the author has struggled to understand how domestic abuse affects later pursuits of literacy outside and inside the university setting. The research for this thesis compelled the author to make a particular argument about the composition instruction of first year college students: the generic memoir assignment should never be assigned.

Roanna Yangco undertook this research while working at the Adult Literacy Program in Dorchester, Massachusetts which is housed in a multi-service center/shelter for single mothers and their children.

In the winter of 1999, Jane Boulton, the Program Manager of Smithers Literacy Services had a burning question, "Why don't inmates access my program on return to the community? I know they are out there and have a need for literacy services, but where are they?" In conversations with other literacy practitioners in the region, Jane found she was not alone in this conundrum.

This book is intended for adults who already have acquired the reading skills and knowledge of a beginning and mid-stage one learner.

There are four chapters in this book:

Chapter 1 - Growing Up
Chapter 2 - Problems
Chapter 3 - What Should Beth Do?
Chapter 4 - Courage

This book is a resource for literacy workers. One of its focus is on the challenges of people having limited literacy skills when they attempt to access counselling services. It also includes information for workers who may be working with victims of abuse and violence.

The goal of this paper is to encourage discussion in the literacy community about how literacy programs can take into account more fully the impact of violence on learning. The author has researched the effect of violence on learning, interviewing learners, literacy workers, therapists, and counsellors for a research study.