Abstract – Although volunteers account for a considerable portion of instructors and tutors delivering adult literacy programmes, they are rarely the focus of research. In Toronto, Canada, a group of community-based adult literacy programmes collaborate to deliver their training to new volunteer tutors. This article looks at why and how they train these new volunteers by reviewing their training documents. Focusing on the critical elements in the training materials, we highlight the importance of recognising the social relations between learners and volunteer tutors in the pursuit of goodness in adult educators.

There are many volunteer educators in adult literacy programmes. In the USA for example, over 40% of the educators are volunteers (Belzer 2006). These volunteer tutors sometimes find themselves insufficiently prepared to work with adult literacy learners (Luk 2016, Perry 2013). Before they start, the volunteers are usually trained by paid staff of adult literacy programmes. The quality and content of such training varies (Belzer 2006, Ilsley 1985). In the West End of Toronto, Canada, four adult literacy organisations work as a collective to provide tutor training to new volunteers. Established in 1986 by Dr. Rita Cox and located in a mixed-income community, Parkdale Project Read is a community-based adult literacy organisation where volunteer tutors and learners meet every week to work on literacy, numeracy and computer skills. The Alexandra Park Neighbourhood Learning Centre, also established in the mid-1980s, provides weekly adult literacy programming for individuals in the area. West Neighbourhood House and LAMP Community Health Centre both offer wraparound community services for all ages, including adult literacy programmes. We will now look closer at two challenges facing new volunteers and how the training materials address these challenges to help new volunteers become good adult educators.

Reflecting on power and privilege

Although the characteristics of volunteer tutors in adult literacy programmes are not readily available or up-to-date, we do know that many of the volunteer tutors have more years of formal education than the learners with whom they work. According to a 2007 study on both paid and volunteer educators in adult literacy programmes in the USA (Ziegler, ­McCallum, Bell 2007), the majority of the educators were reported to have at least an undergraduate degree. Nearly 30% of the volunteers had Master’s degrees, and 5% said they had Doctoral degrees. On the other hand, adult literacy learners usually have incomplete formal schooling. What is more critical than the differences in educational background between volunteers and learners is perhaps how new volunteers may not fully appreciate the stories leading learners to come to adult literacy programmes, and the systemic challenges facing learners (Luk 2016). The training materials from the collective of adult literacy programmes include a module on the power and privilege that are associated with our identities. The training highlights the importance for volunteers to understand how their identities connect to the “unconscious biases or preferences, which are hidden presumptions that can be related to race, gender, disability, religion, sexuality, language, country of origin, etc.”

“Good adult educators need to recognise their social positions and the role of education in addressing broad systemic challenges.”

At the same time, it is also important not to cast adult literacy learners into well-worn tropes such as heroic victims or pawns of destiny that would hinder the development of authentic relationships between learners and volunteers (Belzer, Pickard 2015). The training materials differentiate between social justice and charity. The former “requires investment, commitment and more importantly, relationships with others” while the latter intends to help “but ignores the source of one’s challenges (poverty, racism, etc.) and only perpetuates systemic issues”. The anti-oppressive approach used in the training illustrates that good adult educators in this context need to recognise their social positions and the role of education in addressing broad systemic challenges. 

Relationships with learning 

As mentioned in the previous section, many of the volunteer tutors experience their learning from formal school settings. Their long and fruitful experience with formal education suggests that few of them have extremely negative feelings about learning. As such, it could be difficult for them to imagine that others may associate schooling or learning with trauma (Horsman 2013). What is especially challenging in this context is that what is positive for the volunteers based on their prior learning experience may not be positive for the learners with whom they work. The differences in their learning histories and experiences could become jarring for the volunteers when they realise that they cannot simply replicate what they enjoy themselves in a learning environment. It is therefore important for volunteers to appreciate how learners may have different relationships with learning.