tradition from Barton and Hamilton's innovative Local Literacies (1998), which explored and described people's literacy practices and events in Lancaster. Duckworth's text focuses more on the emotional and social impacts of negative learning experiences than Local Literacies does.


Learners' personal accounts are presented with extracts from interviews; the use of their own words renders them poignant and painful. A particularly evocative example illustrating symbolic violence (in this case interwoven with physical violence) is an incident in the early school career of Stella (p. 45). Stella was left- handed when she came to school. Her comments are in italics; the other words are Duckworth's:


The teacher tied me left hand to a chair and tried to get me to write with me right hand … distressed I went home heartbroken. From then on she would go in school for her mark and then “wag it”. The teachers didn't care about us scruffy kids … kids from poor families were left to do whatever they liked. Stella clearly identifies how as a member of the working class and being poor, her tribal identity was seen as a blemish on her individual character. Moreover, struggling to read and write, her body was used for abomination.


Despite their many challenges, most of the learners do manage to transcend them and achieve success in their learning and growth in their self-confidence. However, as Duckworth shows, there are no fairy-tale endings; the successes are interwoven with sacrifices and losses of significant relationships.


This is an innovative text in its exploration of the learning experiences of people in marginalised communities. It combines scholarly analysis with what Dadds (1995) calls the “passionate inquiry” of the educator who is committed to researching and improving his or her practice. A further achievement of Learning Trajectories is its challenge to the simplistic discourses of the knowledge economy, which fail to take into account the cultural and social issues affecting learners in disadvantaged communities. This book also opens up effectively the connection between literacy and transformation in a chapter of the same name, offering useful insights for practitioners in adult basic skills settings.


References Barton, D. and Hamilton, H. (1998) Local Literacies: Reading and Writing in One Community London: Routledge Bernstein, B. (1971) Class, Codes and Control: Theoretical Studies Towards a Sociology of Language Vol. 1: London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Dadds, M. (1995) Passionate Enquiry and School Development: a Story about Teacher action research. London: Falmer Press. Stringer, E. T. (1999). Action Research, 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.


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