Educational institutions
The bulk of all literacy programming still takes place within educational
institutions or under institutional controls. In the pattern emerging
in most provinces, there will be some support for "community"
programs that lie outside the educational system, or that at least work
outside institutional walls. But this funding will flow through the
educational system. In Québec and Ontario, community programs are frequently
linked to school boards. In the West and the Maritimes, links are developing
between community programs and the community colleges.
Given this direction of development, it appears that the greatest
potential impact of the movement for learner-centred and community-specific
literacy programming will be within institutions. Questions of community
specificity, and the attendant issues of program autonomy, although
raised in their sharpest form by self-consciously community-based programs,
may have their most important bearing on institutions. Of course there
can be community orientation in institutions.178 As a practical
matter, the community specificity of much literacy programming will
be governed by provincial and territorial funding and reporting procedures,
by college and school board administrative procedures, and by the variety
of educational "climates" in those institutions. The
struggle for community specificity will have to be fought at all these
levels.
Workplace literacy
After community programs, the other major novel development in programming
forms since the mid-1980s has been programs in the workplace. From one
point of view, workplace programs offer the most immediate way of addressing
the economics of illiteracy — the question of "productivity"
that has been so central in policy discussions. From another point of
view, the workplace may be seen as one ideal setting for literacy programs,
since worker-learners can have immediate benefit from the skills they
acquire, and recruitment can be supported by powerful networks among
workers.
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