But beyond an examination of the nature of good training, there must be examination of practitioners' access to good training. Access to training depends on certain obvious conditions: programs must be available, and practitioners must have the time and money necessary to engage with them. Furthermore, practitioners' development often occurs through collaborative problem-solving and planning — "methodically observing everyday practices in order to describe them precisely, communicate them, compare them with others and eventually modify them."¹⁵⁷ Collaboration too depends on certain conditions: time together, some stability of involvement or employment, and time that can be devoted to the discussion and development of craft. There are disturbingly common weaknesses.

Volunteer training is weakened by the high ratios of tutor-student pairs to co-ordinators that leave co-ordinators generally overburdened, so that they cannot give sustained attention to training.

For career literacy workers (in the sense of full-time or part-time workers who can hone their skills), there are too seldom real opportunities to engage in study. As with questions of training and supporting volunteers, questions of training cannot be separated from broader policy issues, concerning teachers' contract security, and the availability of paid time for preparation, training and the exchange of experience. There are literacy teachers (most often in school board continuing education programs) who are paid only for their teaching time, which is often only a few hours a week. Such part-time teachers with no job security, although often committed and wanting to improve their work through experience and training, have little opportunity or incentive to do so. Neither are regular, even full-time, institutional contracts a guarantee of opportunities for study. Too often, practitioners even in these enviable circumstances have limited time and money for ongoing training, or for work with colleagues to develop both their programs and their individual skill. A statement from the Association of Canadian Community Colleges notes that "Most faculty/support staff have extremely limited access to training .... Talk about lifelong learning has little meaning if teachers are not expected and supported to be lifelong learners themselves."¹⁵⁸ Some "professional development" questions are of course settled in negotiations between teachers' unions or associations and educational institutions; others in governmental and institutional policy. In both contexts, there should be an insistence on the importance of study for literacy workers.

Creating the conditions for practitioner training, and for the learning that occurs through collaborative planning and problem-solving (conditions defined in funding and administrative procedures, at both program and policy levels), is a major issue for the 1990s. Means must be found to resist self-defeating stinginess in program support.