Lyn Tett and Kathy Maclachlan
Stakeholders, gatekeepers and power: desperately
seeking students’ views in adult literacies research.
Lyn Tett
University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Kathy Maclachlan
University of Glasgow, Scotland
Paper presented at the 36th Annual SCUTREA Conference, 4-6 July 2006,
Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds
Introduction
This paper explores the issues raised through a research project that aimed to
ascertain students’ views of the quality of learning and support that they received in
their programmes. The research design was based on gaining the views of around
1000 adult literacy and numeracy (ALN) students participating in programmes in a
variety of settings (community, work-place, college) and contexts (one-to-one, group,
dedicated, integrated), geographical areas (urban, rural, mixed) and age groups.
Gaining access to students who are studying in ‘roll-on, roll-off’ type of provision by
local education providers in multiple settings poses many methodological challenges
(see also Hyde, 2005). With thousands of courses in a wide range of locations the
most logical place to start to contact students was through providers. However, this
required the engagement of students through a set of relationships that were
mediated through stakeholders and gatekeepers (tutors, managers and organisers of
learning). Over two thousand contacts were made that eventually resulted in 613
people participating in the research, a response rate of only 28%. The paper
explores the reasons for this low response through an examination of the power of
stakeholders and gatekeepers in mediating access to students and the culture/voice
interrelationships that were revealed during the process. First however, it will
examine issues of power in adult education.
Power relationships in adult education
Neither adult education in general, nor literacies learning in particular, operate in a
politically neutral vacuum, cushioned from the social and economic struggles for
power that are enacted in and around the contexts in which the learning is located.
Cervero and Wilson (2001: 11) maintain that this ‘requires us to recognise that adult
learners exist in the structurally defined hierarchies of everyday life …Thus they enter
this process marked by their location within larger systems of power and privilege
that have shaped their experience’.
A body of literature that focuses specifically on power and learning in adulthood
(Brookfield, 2001, 2005, Campbell 1996, Edwards 1991, Foucault 1980, 1982, hooks
1998, Luttrell, 1996) critiques unequal tutor/learner relationships largely through
pedagogical and epistemological lenses. It maintains that social and institutional
structures locate teachers in defined hierarchical positions that axiomatically endow
them with power over ‘their’ students. Drawing from the work of Foucault, Brookfield
(2005) argues that regardless of intent, progressive pedagogies, or emancipatory
ideologies, power is omnipresent, whether we choose to use, abuse or share it with
our students, and whether is externally imposed or internally regulated through
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surveillance and self discipline. Quoting from Foucault, he states that; ‘power is
already there [in society and in adult education], that one is never ‘outside’ it ….The
omnipresence of power means we have to accept that all of us, at all times, are
implicated in its workings. We must accept that “power is co-extensive with the
social body; there are no spaces of primal liberty between the meshes of its
network”.’ (Brookfield 2005: 130) As the ‘social body’ constructs people/power
hierarchies, so it also constructs knowledge/power hierarchies where certain codified
knowledges are deemed more valuable than others. So the teacher, as both a
person in the structural hierarchy and as a holder of valued knowledge, is the cultural
embodiment of the confluence of the two manifestations of power. S/he is therefore
in a position of great power.
The power relationships that pervade all adult education are especially pervasive in
ALN contexts because the dominant discourses surrounding ALN are constructed on
a deficit model of ALN students. This places them in a particularly subordinate
position in the tutor/learner relationship because it defines them by what they lack in
relation to arbitrary defined norms of acceptable literacies skills, and this construction
of students as people who are lacking ultimately prevents their voices being heard in
the public world, as the response rates to our research exemplify.
Despite the growing recognition of the New Literacy Studies and the concept of
situated literacies, traditional constructs of ALN teaching still frame it as the
acquisition of a body of standardised reading, writing and mathematical skills that can
be formally assessed and compared within and between nations. The International
Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) for example posits that around 23% of the Scottish
population have low (ALN) skills and that ‘another 30% may find their skills
inadequate to meet the demands of the ‘knowledge society’ and the ‘information age’
(Scottish Executive 2001, p 8). Equivalent figures were produced for England and
other participating countries that have spurred governments into channelling funds
into literacy teaching aimed at remedying these ‘deficiencies’ and meeting pre-set
targets for minimum levels of literacy competence. Behind these literacy initiatives lie
a set of ideological assumptions that are germane to this paper. They are:

That the statistics provide an accurate account of people’s literacies in use

That formalised teaching will automatically improve ALN competencies in life

That increases in formally assessed levels of literacy will enhance national
economic prosperity

That responsibility for rectifying the problem of low literacy lies with the poorly
literate individual.
The synergistic effect of these unspoken but powerful assumptions positions
literacies students as not only less than complete human beings, but also as people
whose deficiencies have a direct and adverse impact on the national good and who
therefore pose a problem for the literate ‘others’. A front-page article in an American
banking journal proclaimed, ‘Our high level of illiteracy is more than a sad set of
statistics. It is the Achilles heel of our continued prosperity (RBC Centura Bank
2003) (emphasis added). Such messages are internalised by those who are deemed
to be wanting. ‘It shapes how they think about themselves and how they act in the
world’ (Soroke 2004: 44). As Charlesworth, (2000, 243-4) argues:
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Being told that one is not clever is like being told that one is fat or ugly; it is not
something about which one can achieve indifference because it is likely to play
a deciding role in one’s destiny, particularly in the possibility of a worthwhile life
and happiness. Thus we end up with people defined … as ‘useless’, unable,
stupid; lacking in the dignities given to the privileged
Thus literacies students enter the learning situation not as equal adults, but as
marked unequals that are positioned in the power hierarchies even lower than the
‘normal’ adult learner. Add to this the negative experiences of education endured by
many literacies students throughout their schooling (Maclachlan & Tett 2005), and
the whole produces an exceptionally ‘lopsided’ balance of power in ALN contexts.
Desperately seeking students’ views
Thus far, the discussion has centred on power relationships within teaching and
learning, however our research shows that this power also pervades relationships
outside the ‘classroom’. In this context our research was unusual because it focused
on gaining literacies students’ views about their experiences of learning. Doing this,
however, presented many methodological challenges in gaining access them in order
to enable students’ voices to be heard. At the start of the research, collaboration was
secured, in principle at least, from the senior manager in the nine geographical areas
we selected for our fieldwork. They in turn devolved authority to the 10 -12 people in
each area who were responsible for specific geographical sub-areas or institutions to
secure agreement for us to contact students. Negotiating with senior managers within
educational institutions and areas was important to ensure that the necessary
permissions were in place but in reality it was the ‘ground level’ tutors who were
interfacing with students and who were ultimately the people that we needed to
contact. ALN tutors are amongst the most over-stretched group of educational
providers who often are on hourly-paid contracts with little access to staff
development (see Tett et al, 2006). In the past, much ALN teaching occurred in oneto-one contexts because students did not want, or were assumed not to want, their
shame and stigma to be made public. Tutors were predominantly middle class
female volunteers, and Luttrell (2000) claimed that the combination of both produced
exceptionally ‘lopsided’ relationships between tutors and students. Soroke (2004)
maintains that ‘the roots of [this] imbalance stem from the care-giving approach in
adult literacy education …[and]… assumptions about the fragility of adults with low
literacy’ (p 51) which position tutors in a maternally protective role in relation to their
students. In the end over two thousand contacts were made with tutors to seek
permission to interview students and this eventually resulted in 613 students
agreeing to participate in the research. This low response rate of 28% was
predominantly caused by lack of access to students since only 10% did not wish to
participate when the project was explained directly to them.
It appears that managers and tutors exercised, albeit unwittingly, anti-democratic
power over students thus denying them a public voice, partly because the discourses
surrounding literacy and ‘illiteracy’ outlined above infuse additional dimensions of
power into existing hierarchical relationships. Furthermore, like any hegemonic
relationship, this power is naturalised and unrecognised. Bourdieu (1990: 131)
argues that ‘agents, even the most disadvantaged, tend to perceive the world as
natural and to find it surprisingly acceptable, especially when one looks at the
situation of the dominated through the eyes of the dominant’. The ‘natural’ attitudes of
managers and tutors prevented students from participating in research about ALN
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practices because many dominant ‘agents’ had incorporated the discourse of deficit
that pervades literacies practices. Moreover, the discourse of maternal protectionism
blocked our access to some students because their tutors were protecting these
‘vulnerable’ people from what they perceived as the harsh scrutiny of the external
world.
In order to illustrate this, here are some tutors’ comments on why they did not think it
appropriate for ‘their’ learners to participate. ‘My learners’ have learning difficulties
and can’t answer your questions’ (emphasis added). ‘People in this course are very
vulnerable and the research would disturb them’. ‘This group doesn’t like strangers
coming in to it’. ‘It’s taken a long time to develop a relationship with [name of student]
and I don’t want an outsider coming in and upsetting her’. ‘I don’t think our learners
are capable of understanding these kinds of questions’. ‘These young people have
enough problems without you adding to them by asking questions’. ‘I asked my
learners if they wanted to be involved on the research and they said that they didn’t’
(emphasis added). ‘I can’t guarantee that [name of student] will be here as he has
lots of problems and doesn’t turn up to our sessions that regularly’.
These responses show how dominant this discourse of maternal protectionism is and
how pervasive is the emphasis on learner deficits, rather than strengths. The final
quote also illustrates another area of difficulty in finding and accessing students that
may attend sporadically. In the quote the emphasis is on the behaviour of the
individual student but we also found there were institutional problems in relation to
where students were located that show how low this kind of provision is in the
hierarchy of groups especially in further education settings. For example, one further
education college allocated a different room each week to one group of ALN students
at the last minute so often the tutor had to try to find the room and the students before
she could start her class. This meant that student interviews with this group never
took place because the researcher couldn’t find them! Another issue was that a
number of learners did not recognise themselves as ALN students because they were
enrolled on vocational courses such as brick-laying and were having ‘additional
support’ for literacy or numeracy. Again organisers of this type of integrated literacies
provision were reluctant to tell students that they were engaged in literacies provision
because they saw it as a problematic label for learners. For example one college
manager suggested ‘these boys see themselves as bricklayers and that’s positive.
We don’t want them to see themselves as not being able to read because it’s so
negative’. Another, from a different college, said ‘literacy and numeracy support is
available on a drop-in basis but we don’t call it that as students wouldn’t come’.
Again these quotes illustrate the deficit discourse surrounding literacies provision and
show how it has been incorporated into their thinking by managers, tutors and
students.
Hearing student voices
So far we have shown how difficulties in access to students’ voices have been
caused by deficit discourses and power imbalances in relationships within and
outside of the classroom. However over six hundred students did participate and this
final section focuses on how we managed to overcome some of the gate-keeping
tactics and what learners said about the benefits of being listened to.
Faced with difficulties in contacting students through tutors we tried an alternative
method of getting managers to provide the venues and times of classes so that
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interviewers could go directly to students, explain about the research and ask them if
they wished to participate. This process took a long time as records of tuition were
often inaccurate and finding classes, even when they were confirmed as being in a
particular building, was sometimes impossible. It also involved the project
administrator in endless contacts with a wide range of people including
administrators at institutions who had the necessary information but seemed
unwilling to divulge it. When interviewers could talk directly to students, explain what
the research involved, and make sure that students understood that taking part was
optional and would not affect their tuition, almost 90% participated. This is a strong
contrast to the 28% who consented overall and illustrates the role that stakeholders
and gatekeepers of all sorts played in mediating access.
Our persistence paid off however, as students were very positive about being able to
tell their stories to interviewers as the following representative quotes taken from the
interviewers’ notes demonstrate. ‘No-one has really wanted to hear what I had to
say before’. ‘I’m glad you want to hear my story about my life. I want to become
something now - before I just thought I was a nobody’. ‘I want the world to know that
these classes are great so thanks for letting me tell you about them’. ‘I know that lots
of people who can’t read and write very well try to hide it but I want them to know that
you can do it. I did it’. ‘I don’t need to hide my literacy problem any more so I’m
happy to talk to you about it. I thought it would be like school but it isn’t so everyone
should know that.’ A few students had less positive things to say about their tuition.
‘It was difficult to say there were things I didn’t like about my class to my tutor
because she is so kind to me so I’m glad I could tell you’. ‘I want to tell you how bad
things are here – we have the worst classrooms and the worst tutors because
everybody thinks we’re crap’. This last view was unusually negative but both these
quotes illustrate that ALN students may have few opportunities to express
dissatisfaction with the provision within this dominant discourse of individual deficits
that are owned by individual students and not seen as part of wider structural
problems.
Conclusion
A very broad range of providers delivers ALN learning in Scotland. They include, for
example, organizations providing support for the homeless, for recovering addicts, for
parents in schools and for the travelers’ community. Literacies learning can also be
found integrated into, for example, the work of health groups, women’s groups,
drama groups, workplaces and community based issue groups as well as vocational
courses in further education colleges. In these learning contexts, the literacies
learning arises directly out of, and connects specifically with, the issues that the
groups are exploring. It is therefore embedded in real life situations that have
relevance and importance to the learner. We know that the literacy process itself,
and the wider cultural action for freedom born in the context of learning to read and
write (see Freire, 1972), need to reflect the values of equality and activity if tutors are
to be part of a radical tradition rather than a conservative force preventing change.
Freire (op cit) talks of reading the world in reading the word and sees such literacy
learning as enabling adults to learn, not their place in society, but about their place in
society so that they may collectively act to change it for the better. The comments of
some of the students who participated in this research show that in a climate where a
diversity of literacies learning and learning contexts are actively encouraged, and
student’s views are listened to and acted upon, students do begin to recognise their
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personal worth and power, and its impact in the wider world. However, critical, radical
adult learning extends beyond the parameters of individual change. It is a collective
process whereby people who begin to see themselves differently as individuals, also
question together the asymmetrical power relationships that have marginalized them
and their practices, and act to change them.
The students’ comments show that they had changed through participating in
learning, but the change process was essentially individualised, and almost entirely
devoid of the critical. One learner’s quote illustrates this clearly, and echoes of it
were evident in the comments of many others who were interviewed. This learner
had improved in skills, in confidence and in self-esteem and no longer felt the need
to hide what she called ‘my literacy problem’ (emphasis added). However the
problem was still internalised as hers, and though learning had enabled her as an
individual to move beyond the deficit image that she had constructed of herself, it
had not enabled her to challenge the fundamental legitimacy of this construction in
the first place. Furthermore, there was no evidence of such critique in any of the
interviews. The personal had not been connected to the political or the collective.
This presents a challenge for literacies learning in Scotland where old habits of
thinking of students as deficient die hard despite an ideological commitment to a
‘social practices’ approach (Scottish Executive: Learning Connections, 2005) to
learning. Perhaps hearing the student voices at the heart of it all will challenge some
of these deficit discourses and shift the power practices of stakeholders and gatekeepers, assuming, that is, that students can be accessed in the first place!
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