For a (mostly) clear language, illustrated report on what we learned, check out the Beginner's Guide. You'll laugh, you'll cry. You'll cheer and be cheered. On the BG page you will also find activities to use in your own learning circles.

Welcome to the Learning Circles Project website.

Note: The Learning Circles Project happened in 2004-2006. You may find some of the links to external websites do not work any longer. Some of the organizations we worked with have changed or are no longer funded.

This website is for people who are interested in community learning for adults.

This project is about how adults can learn about a variety of topics in an inclusive environment. The people who worked on this project came together as literacy workers.

The project is a place where all adult education workers, learners, researchers, and policy makers can share knowledge, learn from each other and develop understandings, strategies and policies for inclusive, participatory, democratic and sustainable 21st-century learning.

Learning is essential to who we are. 
Most of our learning takes place in daily life.  We also create places to focus learning.  Some of these places are academic institutions of learning: schools, colleges, universities. There are also community places of learning which are quite different from academic institutions. 

This project looks at a kind of learning group that is not widely recognized, but which provides an exciting alternative to academic learning.  In these groups, which we call “learning circles,” adults with various levels of formal education and quite different histories of learning, come together to share and create new knowledge.

In our study of learning circles we:

• identified learning circles in three kinds of communities, urban, rural and Indigenous and did a scan of what circles existed in each community
• visited learning circles and wrote narratives about what we saw in individual circles
• summarized our observations
• held a symposium where learning circle participants came together to share and mobilize knowledge
• documented the values and practices of learning circles
• documented the impacts of learning circles on individuals and on communities
• identified ways in which learning circles can be supported by communities and by government
• developed a manual, The Beginner’s Guide to Learning Circles, for individuals and organizations that might be interested in creating learning circles

The website was developed through a two-year study of learning circles in Canada funded by the National Literacy Secretariat (NLS).

The researchers worked collaboratively with
The Lifelong Learning Working Group, which is itself a learning circle.

This was a Metro Toronto Movement for Literacy (MTML) project supported by a partnership among
MTML,
The Bay of Fundy Marine Resource Centre
and the National Indigenous Literacy Association (NILA).

This website was designed and built
by Tracey Mollins
and is hosted and supported
by the National Adult Literacy Database (NALD).

Thanks to Some Random Dude for the Bitcons and Sanscons.