The Democratizing Workplace Learning Group was established in 1999 and includes researchers, community and union activists and graduate students.

Members of the group share a common interest in conducting research to facilitate the development of innovative forms of activism and learning amongst contingent workers.

DWL Goals

• Documenting and disseminating information about the learning needs of contingent workers.
• Making connections between the work-related learning of contingent workers and social activism.
• Developing accessible, inclusive and socially transformative curriculum for learners who are contingent workers.

DWL Members

Kiran Mirchandani
Roxana Ng
D’Arcy Martin
Gloria Chan
Nel Coloma-Moya
Trudy Rawlings
Jasjit Sangha
Khaleda Siddiqui – Research Assistant
Bonnie Slade – Research Assistant

Contact

Kiran Mirchandani
OISE/University of Toronto
252 Bloor St. West, Room 7-111
Toronto, Ont., M5S 1V6 Canada
Phone: (416) 923-6641 ext. 6273
Email: contingent@oise.utoronto.ca

Research Projects

1. Trained in Vulnerability: Work-Related Learning Amongst Contingent Workers
Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Research Objectives

• To evaluate how theories and policies of work-related learning may be advanced by placing contingent workers at the centre of analysis.
• To investigate the skill and learning needs of four groups of female contingent workers (garment sewers, temporary agency nurses, call centre operators, and supermarket clerks).
• To explore what and how contingent workers learn vis-a-vis the racialized, gendered and class relations within which they work.
• To explore what forms of learning contingent workers engage in, how they define their work as skilled and how they form networks for collectively working, learning, and resisting.

Research papers produced so far:

“Periphery of Practice: Chinese Immigrant Women Navigating the Canadian Labour Market” , by Hongxia Shan

“Learning Experiences of Immigrant Women Workers“, by Srabani Maitra and Hongxia Shan

“Learning Strategies of Resistance: Immigrant Women in Contingent Work in Toronto“, by Srabani Maitra and Khaleda Siddiqui

2. Overcoming Race and Gender Barriers to Computer-Related Workplace Literacy for Immigrant Contingent Workers
Funded by the National Literacy Secretariat

Research Objectives

• To identify both the barriers and possibilities of computer learning for immigrant contingent workers.
• To design curriculum for computer learning that is accessible and inclusive for contingent women workers, and that can assist them in critically assessing digital technology and the “digital divide.”

Research papers produced so far:

“Teachers’ Roles in the Learner-centred Approach – Empirical Evidence from Two Computer Literacy Courses,” by Hongxia Shan

This group sponsored a series of exchanges in 2004 among union educators from Québec, Canada, the United States and First Nations, to support and promote new tools and inclusive methods. Its members continue to study and influence union education practices.

More recently, the group held a design clinic where twenty-five labour educators and researchers shared sessions or courses they were in the process of developing and worked collaboratively on them.

Chaired by Peter Sawchuck , this group includes staff from the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), and the Ontario Secondary School Teacher’s Federation (OSSTF).

It coordinates a more extensive and sustainable preservice teacher education program in education and work issues, building on established business and technological studies offerings, and addresses challenges of coordination among graduate studies offerings in the inter-departmental focus on Learning and Work.

The group has published the curriculum guide “Challenging Class Bias“, available through the TDSB, and “Learning Labour: Ideas for Secondary Schools“, available through the OSSTF.