Individuals who engage regularly in informal learning at work through activities such as reading, writing and calculation have more and better opportunities to maintain and enhance their foundation skills than people who do not use these skills regularly. Not surprisingly, the evidence from IALS indicates that people with high levels of literacy skills have more opportunities to use them in the workplace than people with low levels of skills. The inevitable conclusion is that the workplace has an essential role to play in nurturing literacy. In seeking ways to improve literacy in North America, federal and state governments should work in a productive partnership to ensure that private and public sector employers explicitly demand literacy skills, that they put to use the skills their employees already possess, and that they reward literacy skills as an incentive for workers to maintain and develop them.
In most countries, individuals with poor literacy skills engage in writing at work less than once a week. Given that persons with poor skills have little exposure to literacy tasks at work, it would seem unlikely that they can develop their skills without some form of formal instruction or training. However, the IALS evidence on employer support for training suggests that people with low literacy skills are not afforded this opportunity. The likelihood that workers receive training support from employers is closely connected with these workers' use of literacy skills at work. Workers who use workplace literacy skills the least are less likely to participate in employer-supported training than workers who use workplace literacy skills the most. Employers' efforts to enhance productivity might be channeled into two directions: improving the literacy abilities of less-literate workers, and enabling workers to make the best use of the skills they do have. Many employers might be willing to invest in workplace literacy programs but they are unclear about what kind of instruction to invest in and unsure about the ways in which it will be cost-effective. Governments could help by disseminating information about best practices in workplace literacy programs and supporting the infrastructure necessary to deliver high-quality instruction.
Even if North America succeeds, as part of its strategy to promote life-long learning for all, in building high-quality foundation learning for all and supporting a widely accessible infrastructure for adult education and workplace literacy, it still has to factor in the fact that literacy, in the beginning and the end, is a matter of individual life style and an expression of the culture of the home. IALS respondents were asked several questions about the literacyrelated activities they engaged in at home, including reading a newspaper or magazine, reading a book, writing letters, and watching television. In each country the findings showed the same pattern: those with higher levels of education and higher levels of literacy are on average more often engaged in reading and writing, whereas the inverse was true for hours of watching television. Analysis of the IALS data showed that literacy scores are positively related to peoples' daily reading practices, suggesting that if literacy skills are not used they will deteriorate. These findings imply that low levels of literacy are not solely the result of inadequate support from families, low-quality schooling, a lack of workplace literacy programs, or any other single factor. They stress the need for a comprehensive strategy for developing family literacy programs that requires support from governments, employers and social partners, and local communities. Family literacy programs can fruitfully be linked with early childhood education and care programs in educationally disadvantaged areas. This is particularly important because the parents' role in skills acquisition is critical especially in the first years and during the pre-school period.