This article analyzes literature on university-workplace partnerships and professional writing pedagogy to suggest best practices for workplace mentors to mentor new employees and their writing. The article suggests that new employees often experience cultural confusion due to (a) the transfer of education-based writing strategies and (b) the…

Educational problems underlie the crisis in the high-tech workplace. Insufficient expenditures for workplace education result in low productivity. Technology requires a skilled work force; the chief competitive advantage for a nation will be its skilled workers. Workplace literacy has been a half-hearted effort. Investment of billions by U.S.…

Although numeracy demands in today's workplace are rising steadily, the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) suggests that many workers do not possess sufficient higher-level numeracy skills. Analysis of the NALS results by occupation reveals that large percentages of workers in a wide variety of industries perform only at the two lower levels of…

The globalization of business has influenced the development of customized, job-specific workplace literacy programs. Work-centered participatory literacy receives support from both business and labor and additional impetus from the National Literacy Act of 1991. The worker of the future will be a thinking and communicating problem solver. The…

To investigate the extent of literacy programs in the workplace, an indepth look was taken at the different types of literacy programs in the workplace to determine what can help the state of literacy in the United States. The literacy efforts in the workplace among federal, state, and local government, schools, unions, businesses, corporations,…

The research on workplace literacy programs during the past two decades has revealed a great deal about the requisites for successful workplace literacy programs. The following have been identified as characteristics of effective workplace literacy programs: active involvement by all project partners; employee involvement in the early stages of…

A study examined information from 107 workplace literacy program descriptions from the United States and drew conclusions about joint partnerships, funding, and flexibility. Most of the program descriptions were found in an extensive search using the ERIC database. The programs described were from 1989 and 1990. Some of the findings were the…

The imminent shortage of qualified workers, resulting from demographic changes and technological upgrades, has caused educators and employers to recognize the need to improve and increase their communication in order to achieve their interrelated goals. From the late 1800s, business has exerted influence on the nation's public education system.…

The curricula and methods used in workplace literacy programs were reviewed through a search of the ERIC database. The search was intended to identify the following: literacy skills recommended for teaching literacy through workplace curricula; skills that have been taught through workplace literacy programs; and criteria used to determine program…

Factors affecting companies' readiness to implement workplace training were identified through a survey completed by 50 selected partner companies of the 44 National Workplace Literacy grantees during 1995-1996. Selection of the business partners to whom the survey was administered was left to the grantees' discretion. A 25-item questionnaire…

This document addresses issues related to the problem that many U.S. citizens do not have literacy skills adequate to meet their needs and ambitions. The first section of the paper provides an overview of the problem, discussing how to define literacy, how it has been measured, some estimates of how many people are illiterate, who they are and…

Over the past decade, research by cognitive scientists has been building a clearer understanding of how people learn in school and out. A review of the various streams of cognitive research has implications for vocational education. Research has determined characteristics of effective workers and how people become effective workers. Some…

The state of workplace literacy in the United States was reviewed, and future challenges facing workplace literacy programs given projected economic and demographic changes were examined. First, statistical information from 121 workplace literacy program reports entered into the ERIC database between 1990 and 1993 was synthesized in an analysis of…

The first meeting of the National Literacy Summit 2000 convened 150 leaders from adult education and literacy and other related fields for a 2-day intensive working meeting to begin building a national consensus on how to move adult and family literacy forward in the 21st century. Comments and suggestions offered by summit participants were…