| SkillPlan - BC Construction Industry Skills
Improvement Council |
Overcoming Literacy Barriers in the Construction
Industry |
SkillPlan is a joint labour/management initiative of the British Columbia
construction Industry with the mission of developing training strategies to improve
the basic skills of people working in the unionized construction industry in BC and
the Yukon Territory. The Council with their partners will develop a resource
manual which will address issues such as: apprenticeship, fitting into the
workplace culture, work ethics, technical training, people skills, life style, and
overcoming barriers. They will do this by conducting a series of interviews with
apprentices, journeypersons and employers in the building trades many of whom
have lower levels of literacy. They will also develop practice exercises and
problem solving model applied to different situations. Focus groups will be
organized to gather feedback from apprentices and trades instructors. The manual
will be advertised and marketed through their network of contacts made up of 16
international trade unions, labour and workplace literacy programs. Ordering
information and excerpts will also be made available on their website. A written
final report will be submitted to the NLS. |
| SkillPlan - BC Construction Industry Skills
Improvement Council |
Document Literacy in the Work |
SkillPlan will create two companion documents to its groundbreaking Document
Literacy publication created last year. The first will be a dictionary of document
related vocabulary, while the second will be a model for teaching technical
vocabulary in an applied (workplace) setting. |
| SkillPlan - BC Construction Industry Skills
Improvement Council |
Numeracy Foundations in the Construction Industry |
The BC Construction Industry Skills Improvement Council's mandate is to develop
strategies to improve the essential skills of workers in the BC construction
industry. The Council will develop three types of learning materials that focus on
numeracy foundations and trade applications. These are: 1) assessment tool for
one or more specific trades; 2) self study learning/practice packages in the context
of one or more specific trades; and 3) an updated carpentry trade math text. |
| SkillPlan - BC Construction Industry Skills
Improvement Council |
The Development of a Workplace Essential Skills
Assessment Tool |
The BC Construction Industry Skills Improvement Council, in collaboration with
the Alberta Vocational College - Calgary, will develop a tool that will test the
skills of workers in the workplace based on the methodology established by the
International Adult Literacy Survey. Also collaborating on the project are Stan
Jones, designer of IALS, and Statistics Canada. This tool will answer the need for
a test that matches workers skills to job requirements, especially those
requirements for essential skills. This project draws upon earlier activities such as
IALS, the Essential Skills Research Project, the Canadian Language Benchmarks,
and best practice in workplace literacy. The NLS will be closely involved in the
development of the project. |