Audrey’s Light

Sandy Middleton

Thomas retired from the BC Ministry of Advanced Education (AVED) where she had held the position of Education Officer since 1994. That role was the most recent chapter in Audrey’s long history of contributions to the literacy field. Audrey Thomas has shone a light on adult literacy for almost 30 years. That light burns brightly in the areas of teaching, curricula, training, policy analysis, organizational development, and research.

In this newsletter we mark Audrey’s retirement by celebrating the light she has shed on literacy through her work as a researcher and an advocate for research in practice.

Audrey is an historian — one who has lived the history she writes about. The breadth and depth of her organizational affiliations and contributions to the emergence and development of national, provincial, and community-based literacy organizations are astounding. They include founding director and honorary life member of the Movement for Canadian Literacy and governor, chair, and lifetime companion of Frontier College. As a writer, she has reflected extensively on the achievements and challenges of a young field coming into its own during the past quarter century. From a seminal publication on adult literacy in Canada in 19761 to a recent chapter on how adult literacy became of age in Canada2, her writings serve as an important “memory” of the history and development of adult literacy education in this country.

Audrey is an innovator. She was the first researcher in Canada to investigate nonparticipation in literacy education, a critical issue previously neglected in the literature. It is estimated that less than ten percent of eligible adults ever attend a literacy program to improve their skills. In her groundbreaking 1990 study, The Reluctant Learner: A research report on the reasons for nonparticipation and dropout in literacy programs in British Columbia,3 Audrey sought out and interviewed “hard-to-reach” adults with low literacy skills who had never participated in a program, improving our understanding of the reasons for nonparticipation and raising the level of sophistication of adult literacy research in Canada.

Audrey is a leader. As an advocate for research she played a pivotal role in nurturing a research culture within the literacy field, at the national and provincial levels. In her position as Education Officer at AVED she introduced and supported several innovative initiatives which create and sustain opportunities for practitioners in literacy and adult basic education to do research. Working collaboratively with practitioners in the field and researchers in the academy, she set new directions that encourage and support research in practice. As a result of her leadership, the BC literacy field has benefited from a unique partnership with the academy through the role of “research friends” who provide support and training to practitioners in designing, undertaking and reporting on research projects. The rich outcomes of her efforts are seen in the number and quality of research in practice projects taking place in the BC literacy field and providing new and important insights into literacy education in programs across the province.