This kit explores Australia's National Training Framework, training packages, industry standards and assessment, and the implications of these changes for language, literacy, and numeracy practitioners. Four sections in Part 1 present a series of answers to four frequently asked questions about training packages posed by practitioners in…

This paper is concerned with the role that enterprise-based teachers play in attempting to induct workers on the periphery of the global economy into the discourses of the global marketplace. It focuses on the micro-politics of language, arguing that economic globalization is a social achievement that generates and requires new language and…

Reports on research probing job-related literacy demands and on programs promoting job literacy. (JT)

Presents an overview of the first year's operation of a Learning in the Workplace project that intended to develop industry-specific training materials and model programs that can be used to help employees develop the literacy skills needed in the changing workplace. The effectiveness of a peer-tutoring component is discussed. (Author/CB)

Findings of a three-year co-worker literacy tutoring program in Canada include the following: (1) management and unions must be informed of program intent and purpose; (2) nonreaders' fear of exposure is a major barrier to participation; and (3) workplace literacy coordinators for each industry are essential. (SK)

Describes a workplace literacy project in Canada that trains "literate" workers to tutor their "illiterate" co-workers. Employers were beginning to realize that literacy training could increase production and decrease industrial accidents. Attitudes of employees toward the program are correlated to the attitude and interest of…

Literacy is often based on a type of need (a good to which all should have access, escape from isolation, tool of productivity). The delivery of "packaged" skills based on these approaches ignores the capacity of adult learners to articulate their own needs. (SK)

"Schools and Businesses Need to Work together to Close the 'Job Skills Gap'" (Cortina) discusses Los Angeles efforts to implement recommendations of the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills. "Employer-Sponsored Education Is a Win-Win Situation for Both Businesses and Employees" (Lipshutz) describes a…

Interviews with 12 workers and with management representatives in a manufacturing plant found that the total-quality-management process and workplace literacy program were implemented under the guise of worker development, but were actually driven by policy to reduce labor costs. Adult education was complicit in the strategy of using learning to…

Argues that the political nature of language and literacy is evident in the positioning of adult literacy instruction within the rhetoric of employment-related concerns, particularly competence-based schemata. Identifies assumptions regarding the degree to which the vision of participation, as measured by specific-language literacy, is shared by…

Argues that metaphor, as it thrives in fiction and poetry, is relevant and even essential, to adult-literacy theory and practice. Argues that the concrete poetic images, metaphors, and stories literacy educators learn from students should help shape their theoretical discussions of adult literacy; and likewise, once learned, these should be the…

Discusses the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s: the context of the time, its educational programs, instruction, teachers, and how it handled the problem of illiteracy. Examines whether this kind of program would work in the 1990s, concluding that many of the programs components would transfer well to the present. (SR)

Examines mistakes in following instructions in an electronics factory. Explores the significance of the mistakes and a range of explanations for why they occur. Offers an expansive definition of what it means to be a literate, skills-rich worker, and urges vigilance against the tendency in both schools and workplaces to label and mislabel. (SC)

Basic skill assessments of 109 employees in five small manufacturing businesses revealed that 84% needed additional training in one or more areas. Applied skills needed more remediation than academic skills. Employers expected return on investment in terms of profitability, productivity, and flexibility. Some workers were affected by negative past…

Twelve articles in this special issue look at changes in adult basic education (ABE) including the following: changes in policy, the overhaul of welfare, state governance, workforce development, family literacy, the connection with employment and training, contextualized literacy, health education, political and economic literacy, adult literacy…