Families do not live in isolation. Learners live in communities that provide networks of formal and informal interaction. Some learners feel dissonance because their own family structures, cultural practices, or learning aspirations do not mesh well with the communities in which they live. Others have community responsibilities that interfere with their ability to devote time and attention to their literacy program work. Still others wish to participate more fully in community activities. Literacy Benchmarks and learning outcomes, themes, and assignments acknowledge learners’ community involvement and work, and provide opportunities to expand those sets of knowledge and skills.

Adults bring a wealth of school-related and life-related prior learning experiences to literacy programs. Learners’ feelings about past schooling experiences can be positive or negative. Most adult literacy learners are attempting to acquire skills that they did not, for whatever school-related or unrelated reasons, acquire in grade school. Learners may need help in coming to terms with whatever negative memories they have of school and in recognizing the positive learning that has accrued in their lives since. Literacy Benchmarks build on learners’ existing knowledge and skills. The themes and activities that are developed to achieve literacy outcomes based on those Benchmarks offer opportunities to celebrate what learners already know and can do, while exploring new ways to meet their learning goals both inside and outside the classroom context.

Adults can be motivated to attend literacy programs because of their prior work experiences - or lack thereof. Many adults have goals of becoming qualified for more desirable jobs than the ones they have held since leaving school. Others feel that their lack of any job experience is a result of not completing high school. Literacy practitioners can help adults acknowledge the job readiness skills they already have, identify the skills they still need in order to fulfil their job aspirations, and choose Literacy Benchmarks that will help fill in the gaps.

Adults often have individual learning needs grounded in special learning difficulties, learning style preferences and personal problems. The same learning difficulties that prevented them from completing grade school can get in the way of their literacy skills development as adults. These include Fetal Alcohol Effects (FAE), developmental challenges, Attention Deficit Disorders (ADD and ADHD), and learning disabilities (LDs) such as nonverbal disabilities, dyslexia, and visual-spatial disorders. Learning style preferences include visual, auditory, and psychomotor orientations to learning, as well as cognitive perception and processing patterns. In addition to these needs, learners can have personal problems ranging from mild emotional distresses to severe physical and psychiatric illnesses.

Literacy practitioners are not expected to have expertise in the wide range of special needs that learners bring to the classroom, but they can learn to be sensitive to problems that may require outside medical or psychological intervention, and they can listen carefully to what learners say about their own needs and how to address them. They can also consult with other literacy practitioners and attend training sessions on working with learners who have special learning needs. Recommended resources available from the Saskatchewan Literacy Network (SLN) include the Level 2 tutor training kits Learning How to Learn (SLN, 2001) and Drawing the Line: Dealing with Affective Issues in Literacy (Horsman, 2001). See also Terry (2002) for tips on adapting learning situations to the needs of learners with different cognitive styles. (See the Annotated Bibliography in Appendix G for more information.)