Table 6 lists the demonstration activities that were developed for this project.

In some cases, the tasks that the trades people recommended were not directly linked to the use of literacy and basic skills, but were still deemed to be authentic and real-life. In these cases, we designed demonstration activities that required the use of these skills. Although this made the demonstration somewhat artificial, we felt that the tasks were important to include, since they are central to the day-to-day activities of apprentices working in the field.

For example, one hairstylist informed us that consulting with and advising clients about their needs was the most important aspect of the job. Advising clients about the kind of hairstyles that would best suit their face shape, age, personalities and lifestyles, for instance, is central to effective customer service. Experienced professional hairstylists normally do this “by sight”, with no literacy and basic skills being applied to the task. However, hairstyling apprentices learn about face shape and the kind of styles associated with each by reading about it while completing the in-class portion of training. We decided that asking an LBS learner to read about face shapes and to apply the information to making a judgement about face shape and hairstyles was an appropriate way to integrate literacy and basic skills into the demonstration.

Once we had a list of potential demonstration activities, it was necessary to gather authentic materials, and to examine each of the demonstrations in terms of their degree of skill integration and complexity. In this step, we were trying to determine what approximate LBS level a learner attempting these activities would require.

Gathering authentic materials proved to be more difficult than we had anticipated in some cases. We did not have access to learning materials that would be used during in-class training, In addition, many of the demonstrations we had selected did not have actual forms or other reading or writing materials that are used. In most cases, therefore, we looked for other materials such as magazine articles and Internet resources that could be adapted for the same purpose.

This was actually a benefit to the project, however. The lack of authentic materials made it possible to rewrite existing materials to more closely reflect the LBS level they were intended for. This step would likely have been necessary anyway, given that learning materials encountered in academic settings at the post-secondary level are frequently more complex than a learner at level 4 or 5 would be expected to manage.