Many adults who enter classrooms have difficulty accomplishing these communication tasks and may be considered illiterate using an organizational definition of literacy. Therefore, it is the role of the teacher/facilitator in the adult education classroom to provide experiences that promote both narrative and organizational forms of literacy and build on diversity.

Research points out that lack of facility in organizational literacy in no way indicates a lack of cognitive ability or logic. These same adults come to us with an ability to tell stories and a personal and community dialect that should be honored in the classroom.

“It may have seemed that I was O.K., but inside I was scared… The day I got here, I did not want to come into the building… Then I had to walk up the steps – one flight, two flights, and there were more… I got to the top of the steps and I came to the door, and my body would not move… I just wanted to go back home, but I said to myself, ‘You came too far to stop here.’” -Ian C.

The whole language or language experience approach to literacy development encourages instructors to begin by generating personal stories from their students. By establishing a narrative framework in the classroom, instructors lead learners along the literacy continuum toward understanding and mastery of society's dominant literacy, that is organizational literacy.