Becoming a collective: An examination of consciousness, ideology and praxis through stories from an adult literacy program in Toronto, Canada


Annie Luk, University of Toronto

Adult literacy practitioners in Canada often find themselves straddling a tricky balance between actualizing the state’s agenda of using adult literacy as a labour market strategy and advocating for learners in pursuit for equity (Elias et al., 2021).  Despite the challenge in this contradiction, many adult literacy practitioners continue with their work and their commitment to learners and social justice as much as they could (Barker et al., 2023).  The increasing pressure from the government policies to narrow the goal of adult literacy education for employment (Elfert & Walker, 2020; Elias 2023; Walker & Rubenson, 2014) is sometimes translated into valuing certain knowledge more so than others and privileging learners of certain characteristics more so than others (Gardner, 2017).  While research typically focuses on practitioners’ approaches and strategies to support learners (Allatt & Tett, 2019; Smythe, 2015), it is also beneficial to examine the practices that attempt to challenge the underlying social hierarchy of abilities and knowledge. This paper shares stories from practitioners in one adult literacy program in Toronto, Ontario and how they used the program’s collective or non-hierarchical structure as a way to push for equity and social justice.  Through the Marxist concepts of consciousness, ideology and praxis as discussed by Paula Allman (1999, 2001, 2007), I set out to further understand whether through using a collective organizational structure, the collective members of this adult literacy program were agents of change or reproduction with an uncritical/reproductive or a critical/revolutionary praxis.  The stories of adult literacy practitioners were collected using narrative inquiry to understand how their learnings through their experience of becoming a collective had impacted their consciousness, ideology and praxis.  Through critically analyzing these stories from collective members of an adult literacy program, I hope to highlight the importance of also paying attention to the changes that we need to make to ourselves and the structures we find ourselves as part of our pursuit for social change.

This paper will be presented at the following session: