A. Discussion of the Findings and their Implications: A Disparity Between Learning Literacy and Learning About Work

In addressing the study's four sub–questions, one issue seemed to emerge over and over, albeit in a variety of different ways. This issue also addressed the study's overarching research question: How do situated views of literacy and learning contribute to an understanding of the employment preparation program and its three settings? Using the frameworks of situated learning and literacy to closely examine the employment preparation program revealed a disconnect between the work settings (the coffee shop and job placements) and the class setting, and subsequently between the notions of learning literacy and learning about work. This disparity or disconnect became apparent when 1) the funder's vision of literacy education was not realized through its success measures; 2) literacy was schooling and learning was doing; 3) a new literacy practice emerged from the coffee shop and not the classroom; 4) and the original intentions of the program were different from the results. In addition, there was an issue that remained outside the frameworks of situated learning and literacy as they were used in this study, and that is an understanding of the individual and the factors that affect his or her learning. As part of the discussion, the limitations of the employment preparation program to affect economic and social change in the lives of the students, will also be explored. Although all of the above issues are specific to the employment preparation program, they will be placed within a context of research and common understanding in order to make connections that suggest how this study has implications for the field of adult literacy education.

The employment preparation program's unique combination of learning—literacy development in a class setting, employment development in an operational coffee shop, and employment experience in a job placement in the community—is an uncommon approach in the field. St Clair (2001) notes that the combination of employment preparation and literacy education is unusual and not widely supported in Canada, despite suggestions that this approach is an ideal way to meet the employment, learning, and literacy needs of students (Hull, 1992; Imel, 1998; Martin, 1999). The program's uniqueness was an opportunity to explore a variety of learning dynamics within a field that is deeply entrenched in traditional methods (Purcell–Gates, Degener, Jacobson & Soler, 1998).