The Massachusetts Workplace Literacy Consortium sought to upgrade work-related literacy skills at 22 partner sites in the state. Members included manufacturers, health care organizations, educational institutions, and labor unions. In its third year, the consortium served 1,179 workers with classes in English for speakers of other languages, adult…

The Attleboro (Massachusetts) Workplace Education Program, a partnership of four area companies and Bristol Community College, is intended to provide workers with education that will improve the quality of their lives and their work. Housed in a corporate office building in the Attleboro Industrial Park, the program offers classes in English as a…

A survey of 42 Massachusetts workplace literacy programs was conducted in fall 1989 to determine whether the programs generally fit a standard definition of workplace literacy derived from "A Guide to Developing Instruction for Workforce Literacy Programs" by Jorie W. Philippi. The study's seven-item questionnaire included the definition…

An evaluation of the fifth cycle of operation of the Massachusetts Workplace Education Initiative had several purposes: (1) to identify the indicators of quality in workplace education; (2) to begin to design an evaluation system for each program; and (3) to assess the indicators of quality for workplace education programs against the national…

The Global 2000 project was a 3-year project aimed at improving literacy in five Massachusetts manufacturing companies. To help determine the project's effectiveness, a team of external evaluators analyzed the relationship between the knowledge students gained in the classroom, their actual performance on the job, and the resulting business impact…

This document is the final report on Global 2000, a 3-year workplace literacy project during which 87% of the 805 employees of 10 Massachusetts manufacturing companies enrolled in workplace literacy classes offered by the Continuing Education Institute (CEI). A total of 61 classes were held and 41 employee-participants earned high school diplomas…

The Continuing Education Institute (CEI) established a seven-member training collaborative to upgrade the literacy and English language skills of nursing assistants, dietary aides, and housekeeping workers employed in a chronic and acute care hospital and in five Massachusetts nursing homes. Three adult basic education (ABE) classes, five…

The Global 2000 project was a 3-year project aimed at improving literacy in five Massachusetts manufacturing companies. At four of the five Global 2000 program sites, an external evaluator conducted focus groups and open-ended interviews with members of the projects' employee involvement teams, previous students, and teachers. The evaluator also…

An evaluation of the Massachusetts Workplace Education Initiative brings together three phases: (1) a pilot outcome study conducted with a sample of six local workplace education programs and featuring the perspectives of workers, labor, and management; (2) program profiles for seven federally funded workplace education programs coordinated by the…

The authors carefully followed for a year or more the inner experiences of learning and change of 41 ABE/ESOL (Adult Basic Education/English for Speakers of Other Languages) learners from all over the world. They were enrolled in three distinct U.S. programs (a community college, a family literacy site, and a workplace site), each oriented to…

The role of adult education in sustaining economic growth and expanding opportunity in Massachusetts was explored. The analysis focused on the new basic skills needed for a new economy, groups lacking the new basic skills, the demand for adult basic education (ABE), funding for ABE, building basic skills through adult education, ABE's costs and…

How do ABE/ESOL (Adult Basic Education/English for Speakers of Other Languages) programs shape adult learners, and how do adult learners, in turn, shape their programs? Beyond the acquisition of important skills (such as greater fluency in the English language) what are the bigger internal meanings for adults of participating in ABE/ESOL…