WE LEARN

(Women Expanding: Literacy Education Action Resource Network)

WE LEARN values and promotes literacy and literature for all women&endash;especially those with lower-level English reading and writing skills. Education can become a liberatory opportunity, especially for women disadvantaged by traditional schooling. Women and girls need and deserve access to a variety of creative educational opportunities, programs, resources, and materials at all levels of readability.

PURPOSE
The purpose of this study is to discover what materials literacy workers currently use to meet the needs of women learners in a way that helps women understand their situation as women, and as people whose lives are further complicated by issues related to race, ethnicity, age, culture, sexuality, physical or learning disability, or class. What resources are currently being used by educators and literacy workers? How they are being used? What curriculums and reading materials have been developed 'in the field' by literacy and workfare educational programs serving the specific needs of women with lower-level English literacy skills?

HISTORY
A similar study in using a variation of this questionnaire was conducted in 1999-2000. Results of that study will be available on ERIC in the Spring of 2001. This newly edited questionnaire expands on that study and will strive to include more literacy workers in the conversation.

OUTCOMES
Portions of this research will be used in a dissertation for a doctoral degree in education. Additionally, the benefits of this study will be made available to literacy communities in the following ways:

• Results posted on this website in the Spring of 2002
• Results provided in print format to those who participate by answering the questionnaire
• Summary prepared for publication in an adult education journal
• Specific information about materials and resources will be compiled, annotated, and added to the preliminary resource listing already available on this site.

This research also contributes to a process underway to establish WE LEARN as a non-profit organization -- resource center / clearinghouse -- dedicated to women-centered literacy publishing, review, networking, and distribution. What I hope will emerge is an on-going and vital community of learners, literacy workers, librarians, educators, and writers integrally committed to and involved in the process of creating women-centered (feminist) adult basic literacy materials.

There are four sections to this questionnaire to download. For best results, use Netscape Navigator 4.5 or better:

Section A: Site Specifics

Section B: Specific Questions on Reading/ Resource Materials

Section C: What Additional Feminist Resources Do You Use?

Section D: List of Responders

 

Also available in pdf format

This research is being conducted by Mev Miller as a section of information for her dissertation for an Ed.D. in Critical Pedagogy (with emphasis on issues of literacy and adult women) at the Univ. of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, MN. Mev is also a co-founder of Women Leading Through Reading in Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN.