III
From practice to policy
In all areas of literacy work there are ongoing processes of discovery.
To encourage them there should be of course general support for literacy
programming, and specific encouragement of innovation. There is also
the possibility — which has informed this discussion of issues
for the 1990s — that the discoveries of practice can be taken
up into policy, and into an expansion of literacy work. This possibility
raises questions about the extent to which the policy process is permeable
to discoveries made in practice, and about the capacity of the governments
and institutions that regulate literacy work to absorb its lessons.
Practitioners have urged that:
The literacy community in Canada represents a considerable depth and
breadth of knowledge and experience. It is therefore essential that
literacy practitioners and program participants be involved in the development
and implementation of public policy.196
The literacy community — workers and students — must take
a leading role in developing policy at all levels of government: local,
regional and national.197
For the literacy community to take a leading role in the development
of policy — to use these statements as a leitmotif for the conclusion
of this report — advocacy organizations must be somehow represented
in the processes that define literacy policy. And these organizations
must undertake to engage with the public discussion of literacy, the
drafting of policy statements, and the devising of documentary procedures
and controls.
Representation can occur in various ways. Advocacy organizations might
select representatives to sit on literacy advisory bodies. These have,
in the past, often included learners and practitioners as individual
members. However, even this is not always done, and these bodies never
give a leading role to representatives of literacy organizations. On
the other hand, practitioners' and advocacy organizations might choose
not to sit on advisory bodies, in order to maintain a critical distance.
So proposals for policy and administrative procedures might be circulated
publicly for reaction from literacy organizations. Finally, of course,
the literacy community might itself initiate proposals for policy and
administrative arrangements, and call on governments to respond.
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