Issues Arising from Andragogical Adaptation to a Literacy Culture

As mentioned, TOWES was developed in a college environment in Alberta (Bow Valley College) and PDQ developed by an American company (Educational Testing Services) specializing in developing educational tests. These two assessment instruments were not developed specifically with a low-level literacy clientele in mind. TOWES was designed to assess workplace Essential Skills while PDQ was intended to assess the functional literacy and numeracy skills of the general population. These instruments do not seem suitable for use in an AFB environment with its very specific training culture. As an example, their use appears very difficult in situations involving the first levels of an AFB clientele (that is, AFB level 1 learners and the vast majority of AFB level 2 learners). We have not field-tested TOWES and PDQ with learners from these levels in this project, but we did note that the assessment tasks observed did not seem appropriate for the literacy level of AFB levels 1 and 2 learners. Furthermore, the protocols that regulate testing sessions do not allow the assessor to individually assist a learner with weak reading skills; yet, such an arrangement in many cases would be necessary to permit a valid assessment of Essential Skills of those learners who are very low on the 500-point scale.

Another question arises concerning the two instruments. This question concerns their ability to adapt so they can accurately assess a clientele with low levels of literacy. In that sense, it would be worthwhile to study the possibility of field testing these two assessment instruments with a clientele chosen from the first two AFB levels in order to determine their user-friendliness and their effectiveness with this segment of the AFB clientele. It would also be worthwhile to explore the possibility of developing instruments better adapted to this segment of the AFB clientele to ensure that these instruments are compatible with a framework based on Essential Skills in this specific cultural context.

Issues Arising from Linguistic Adaptation to a Francophone Culture

TOWES and PDQ were first developed in English and then translated into French for use with a Francophone population across the country. Concerning the strictly linguistic aspect, we found it difficult to evaluate the two instruments exhaustively since we were unable to actually have the tests in our hands in order to conduct an in-depth linguistic study of them. Feedback obtained from learners and instructors who were given the tests seems to indicate that the TOWES G2 test was relatively well translated from a linguistic point of view but that certain errors had been noted in the French version of PDQ.