Methodology

For this report, I surveyed a variety of formal and informal statements of good practice published since 1990 in Canada, the United States, Britain and Australia. In some documents, good practice was explicitly stated and in others it was implicit in the description of how the programs operated. I also interviewed educators currently working in the field in Ontario, New York, and Massachusetts; another consultant, an associate in professional development for workplace educators with Lancaster University (England), was also familiar with educators, publications and activities in Australia. For educators in Ontario relatively new to the field, I was interested in how they were using good practice guidelines. For those with experience, I wanted to know what was new in good practice and how the current economic, political and educational contexts were influencing good practice today.

In Ontario, for instance, funding for adult education has been drastically reduced over the last decade. Workplace education, a once thriving avenue for adults to reconnect with education, has been barely visible on the provincial map since the mid to late 90s. Now, workplace education reemerges as part of Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS), a long-standing program with stable links in communities and educational institutions. This new framework for workplace education will affect good practice as the field redefines itself.

In other jurisdictions (e.g., Massachusetts and Australia), changes in the economic and political climates have also repositioned workplace education. In Australia, workplace basic skills is best promoted through industry ‘training packages’ where it is part of a large-scale training plan for sectors or industries. The authors of Built-in not Bolted-on say “the most strategic and effective role in industries of a literacy and language practitioner is as a member of a training team” (Bradley et. al., 2000, p. 11). In that capacity, they can contribute more broadly by supporting training with adult education principles, working with technical trainers, developing training materials, and ensuring that industry assessments follow good practice guidelines. The face-to-face training that defines workplace education in many other jurisdictions is seen as just one role for educators. Even that role is reframed by their socio-cultural approach to literacies (3) and language. Literacies are built-in to work and the culture of the workplace, built-in to the people relations and how work actually gets done, not bolted-on as a skill or activity separated from people, work and power. By extension, workplace literacies and language get built-in to the whole system of training, not bolted-on as an afterthought, or the pre-curser to the real focus — job training.