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There is an increasing need for community-based adult education that is responsive to the ever-growing and often marginalized international immigrant population in Toronto and sensitive to the socio-cultural complexities they face.
Our research studies the work of two social service agencies who in response to this need have been conducting digital storytelling workshops that invite newcomer women to tell their stories through various media.
These community- and arts-based workshops provide a venue for newcomer women to improve their literacy and technology skills, and to build community connections by telling and listening to each other’s stories. Our study considers the non-material—organizational, social, and psychological—factors that encourage newcomer women to participate in, or deter them from, such community-based adult education opportunities. Our hope is that the insights generated here can offer educational researchers and community-based organizations greater insight into the factors and dynamics structuring the participation of newcomer women in adult learning initiatives.
Our research findings illuminate several factors, including language fluency and resources, program design, pedagogical emphasis on storytelling, family and community support systems, self-perceptions and beliefs, and societal perceptions of immigrant women, each of which may act as a barrier or motivator at different times for different women. In addition, our research findings trouble the distinction between material and non-material factors, especially in the lives of participants facing socio-economic challenges, and suggest that what contributes more to the accessibility of adult learning than a specific set of instructions that attempts to remove all barriers is a flexible responsiveness to whatever barriers and motivators may be present in a given context.
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