Too Scared to Learn is directed primarily at educators. It is based on my belief that educators and the education system must recognize the impact of women's and girls' experience of violence on their attempts to learn. This belief comes out of many years of work -- as a practitioner and researcher/writer -- in the field of adult literacy and job training. Although the research and practice that inform this book are drawn primarily from work with adult literacy learners, the implications are much broader -- extending to girls' experiences of learning and all other settings in which adult women endeavor to learn.
Extensive research forms the basis of this book. I interviewed counselors and therapists, literacy learners, and educators working in different situations and read a wide range of theoretical and experiential publications. My purpose was to begin to build a bridge between therapeutic and educational discourses to encourage greater exchange of knowledge between the two fields and to contribute to the development of new discourses and practices that reconceptualize the intersection between violence and learning. Reconceptualization is crucial because previous understandings have pathologized learners and minimized the problem, rather than recognize the need to develop educational practices that facilitate learning for all.
I talked to an enormous number of people in each region of Canada, yet know that learners, practitioners, and counselors in other locations could have added further insights. I continued the research through conversations, in person and on e-mail, with practitioners based in Canada, the United States, and Australia sparked by an online seminar, workshops, presentations, and my requests for permission to quote. All these interactions . . .
