They also focus more on institutional support, like the need for appropriate funding for such educational programs, rather than psychological issues attacked to assimilation. Changing demographics in recent years in Canada have forced adult education programs to meet the challenge of doing more with fewer resources, as they fight, for more funding for programs designed to orient immigrants in the language and culture of the area. "As new citizens to Canada, they need educational programs to help them navigate the complex paths that citizenship entails and to upgrade their language, knowledge and skills to fully participate in Canadian society."
Unlike Ferrigno's article on education that accepts community criticism and a critique of society as a whole, Guo and Sork's see "adult education as an agency of social progress" in moving students forward into better economic opportunities. Adult education is "an important forum for building inclusive citizenship" more so than changing the national consciousness. Guo and Sork seem to have a fundamentally different social aim than Ferrigno, and even deny the need a high level of learner involvement in programs and "the planning of programs. They believe that "the development and character of the programs offered was determined not so much by the interactions of individuals in planning groups representing the interests of various stakeholders, but rather by the changing nature of Canada's immigration policy, the shifting character of the immigrant population, and government funding," in short, external social issues.
However, the program called SUCESS which they studied did engage in some social engineering efforts that proved successful, such as a radio station broadcast a program called the "Dim Sum Diaries," which "satirized the accents of new Chinese immigrants and stereotypes of their behavior. SUCCESS participated in a national campaign against the first and led a
In contrast to Guo and Sork, Cunningham and Curry are less interested in expanding the sources of governmental and other channels of institutional and financial support for adult education, rather they believe that spontaneity and grass roots movement provide the best sources of empowerment. They welcome financial support, but the 'grass roots' enthusiasm and education from the community-level upwards is required for programs to be meaningful and realize their aim. Even in contrast to Ferrigno, who believes there is a need for teachers to carefully structure classes to create safe spaces for individuals such as
women to find their voice, Cunningham and Curry focus on change from within. They instead see the more diffuse rich tapestries of community-based organizations as a potential source of education, even though government-sponsored Empowerment Zone (EZ) act as critical factors in coalescing and precipitating grass roots movements that educate the community. The bulk of their article is not on formal educational programs, like the previous two articles, instead they only note when
teaching and
learning has organically occurred. They found that informal adult educational opportunities, at least in terms of securing social justice within the community, seemed more 'robust' when they were spontaneous, rather than the result of design, in direct contrast to the other authors. The unique nature of the Chicago population and activist programs studied may be the reason for this finding (all authors tend to use a case study approach, focusing on a specific population or program) in contrast the
personal empowerment and language education, that were the focus of the previous articles.
