Best Practice #5: Instruction

The Fort Resolution Community Family Literacy Program follows the ECE curriculum closely for its adult basic education and literacy learners. The program has successfully managed to overcome the challenge of how to promote self-directed learning, where learners are active participants in the learning process and assume responsibility for their own learning, even when following curricula with set learning objectives. To support learners, it has trained literacy tutors through its adult literacy tutoring program to assist with ALBE 110 – 130 instruction. As a result of shaping learning to the learners, at the end of the 2003 – 2004 academic year, 13 learners were still participating in the ALBE program, compared to 5 or 6 in previous years. Staff also prepare activities that draw on learners’ own experiences and encourage them to construct their own meanings while interacting with learning materials.

Instructors rarely lecture. They design problems that help learners construct knowledge; they will take a back-seat and allow learners to discover on their own, yet are available for assistance. Such an approach allows learners to develop problem-solving and critical thinking skills. For example, instructors/tutors often provide learners with questions to think about as they read a text. After reading individually, they then discuss the questions in a group, where their different perspectives are validated and respected. The end result is that learners learn how to apply information and concepts to new contexts.