Due to increased use of technology, the workplace practices of engineers have changed. So-called techno-mathematical literacies (TmL) are necessary for engineers of the 21st century. Because it is still unknown which TmL engineers actually use in their professional practices, the purpose of this study was to identify these TmL. Fourteen…

This essay raises questions about the future of information literacy in higher education, given the prevalence of the "Information Literacy Competency Standards" in the library profession for the past 15 years, and the heated debate that took place regarding whether the "Framework for Information Literacy" and the…

Learning and Work Institute (L&W) was commissioned by the Department for Education to identify and illustrate effective practice in the delivery of English, maths and digital skills across a range of traineeship and/or apprenticeship providers, and to identify any practices that are particularly effective for learners with learning…

Workers are faced with wider networks of knowledge generation amplified by the scale, diffusion, and critical mass of digital artefacts and web technologies globally. In this study of mobilities of work-learning practices, I draw on sociomaterial theorizing to explore how the work and everyday learning practices of self-employed workers or…

Successful workplace literacy and numeracy programs are dependent on effective strategies to recruit and then retain course participants. This article reports on the recruitment strategies used in a large workplace literacy and numeracy project involving 535 workers in 18 courses. It provides an analysis of the strategies used, their rates of…

The "Hamburg Declaration" (UNESCO, 1997) is perhaps most quixotic and prescient in laying out the changing world of work as envisioned in 1997. It includes particular commitments to promote the rights to work and to work-related adult learning, to increase access to work-related adult learning for different target groups, and to…

Whether in pursuit of a safer place to live, economic advancement or simply from a desire to travel, increasing numbers of professionals find themselves working outside familiar cultural settings and using a language in which they did not train. As a country of migration, Australia is home to many such transnationals. Despite high levels of…

This article examines memory and distributed cognition involved in the writing practices of emergency medical services (EMS) professionals. Results from a 16-month study indicate that EMS professionals rely on distributed cognition and three kinds of memory: individual, collaborative, and professional. Distributed cognition and the three types of…

Prior studies indicate that vocational students' literacy practices are more demanding than is generally recognised. Employing a view of literacy acquisition as socialisation, we investigated the literacy practices of trades training in Carpentry and Automotive Technology, by interviewing tutors and examined course books and student writing. A…

The revised Core Arts Standards offer music educators the chance to examine the contradictions that currently permeate the arts advocacy discourse. This article examines the emphasis on 21st-century workplace skills in claims made by arts advocacy proponents. An alternative approach focuses instead on lifelong learning in the arts and the array of…

Many Western governments are looking to workplace literacy, language, and numeracy programs to address general skill improvement with a longterm aim of improving labor productivity. Rigorous research on these programs' effectiveness for both of these agendas, however, remains sparse and limited in scope. This article reports the findings of an…

In the wake of the technological revolution that began in the last decades of the 20th century, labour market demand for information-processing and other high-level cognitive and interpersonal skills is growing substantially. The "Survey of Adult Skills," a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult…

This paper examines the degree to which British adults participating in workplace literacy courses improved their reading comprehension skills, using longitudinal data which cover the period from enrolment until between two and three years later. Learners were tested using an instrument designed explicitly for adults, with two parallel forms. For…

In our increasingly competitive and rapidly changing world, it is critical that college graduates enter the workforce with the requisite skills for lasting success. However, recent studies suggest employers increasingly identify a workforce readiness gap in core applied skills, which must be bridged by company investment. Teaching strategies that…

Using a New Literacy Studies perspective that recognizes multiple literacies that are meaningful within their sociocultural traditions, this collective case study investigated the range, form, and purpose of the out-of-school literacies of four Latina/o adolescent English learners. The qualitative methodology employed constructivist interviews,…