Maestras: Exploring dialectical relationships in an Aboriginal literacy campaign

Abstract

Previous studies have documented the personal transformation that many low literate adults undergo when they engage in literacy campaigns. In particular, research has captured how improved literacy leads to a greater willingness and capacity to speak out, or what is often referred to as voice. This paper focusses on the impact of an adult Aboriginal literacy campaign on those responsible for implementing it. Through the words of these ‘maestras’, we reveal how the teachers and trainers of the campaign, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, experience a similar trajectory of transformation to the literacy students. This transformation, we argue, is the result of the pedagogic relationship between students, local campaign staff and national trainers. This dialectical relationship in which teacher is learner and learner teacher is at the heart of the literacy campaign model and is part of what Giroux (1988) characterises as a radical theory of literacy and voice. We further argue that the impacts of the literacy campaign at the individual and collective levels and crucially, the sustainability of these impacts depend largely on this pedagogic relationship and the new, shared understanding of the world which results.