[AAACE-NLA] FCE and Workforce Development

[tsticht@znet.com]

February 16, 2007

Functional Context Education for Workforce Development

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

In the hills and hollows of rural Kentucky in 1911 there were no lights
to help the night-time traveler find the way to a distant school. So the
schools operated only on nights when the moon was out. For this reason
they became known as the Moonlight schools of Kentucky.

Started by Cora Wilson Stewart, Superintendent of Schools in Rowan
County, the Moonlight schools aimed at teaching literacy to the
illiterate adults in the county. However there were no readers in print
for teaching adult illiterates, and Stewart thought it inappropriate to
use the same readers and texts for adults as were used for children in
the day school. So she developed the Rowan County Messenger as a
newspaper which could be used to teach reading and writing using news
about which the adults were interested.

Later Stewart wrote a series of texts for adult literacy learners called
the Country Life Readers. In these texts she once again placed the
teaching of reading and writing within content areas of interest to the
rural populations of Kentucky such as farm improvement, good roads,
horticulture, sanitation and so forth. She said, "...each lesson
accomplished a double purpose, the primary one of teaching the pupil to
read, and at the same time that of imparting instruction in the things
that vitally affected him in his daily life" (Stewart, 1922, p. 71).

Jumping ahead almost a century, today in the industrialized nations of
the world there is an urgent concern for up-skilling the literacy,
language and numeracy (LLN) and vocational skills of under-skilled
workforces.
International adult literacy surveys showing one- to two-fifths of a
nation's workforce with lower than expected LLN skills and an emergent
globalization of work with jobs being sent to lower wage nations have
heightened the need for effective and efficient ways to help adults
up-skill, re-skill and cross-train as jobs shift globally and
technologically.

Fortunately, since Cora Wilson Stewart's pioneering work showing how to
accomplish "a double purpose" in literacy education, there have been a
number of studies that have demonstrated how to apply the same approach
to integrate basic skills with vocational skills training. A review of
50 years of research in the U. S. Department of Defense on how to
re-design both vocational programs and literacy programs to accommodate
less skilled personnel and provide them with job-related knowledge,
skills, and literacy was conducted by Sticht, et al. (1987). They found
one project showing that in an integrated basic skills and job knowledge
program, students made as much or more gain in "general" literacy as was
made in general literacy programs that were not job-related. Importantly
however, the integrated program made over three to five times the amount
of gain in job-related reading as achieved by the general literacy
program.

The foregoing review lead to the formulation of Functional Context
Education with several principles for creating integrated vocational
and basic skills courses that facilitate learning on entry into the
course, learning throughout the course, and transfer into the contexts
for which the learning is meant to apply. To accomplish these
objectives, courses should be developed that:

oExplain what the students are to learn and why in such a way that they
can always understand both the immediate and long term usefulness of the
course content (facilitates entry into the course; motivates learning).

oConsider the old knowledge that students bring with them to the course,
and build new knowledge on the basis of this old knowledge (facilitates
entry
learning)

oSequence each new lesson so that it builds on prior knowledge gained in
the previous lessons (facilitates in-course learning).

oIntegrate instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, and problem
solving into vocational or technical training programs as the content of
the course poses requirements for these skills that many potential
students may not possess; avoid decontextualized basic skills "remedial"
programs (facilitates in-course learning; motivates basic skills
learning; reduces instruction time; develops "learning to learn" ability
).

oDerive objectives from careful analysis of the explicit and tacit
knowledge and skill needed in the technical training, or employment
context for which the learner is preparing (facilitates transfer).

oUse, to the extent possible, learning contexts, tasks, materials, and
procedures taken from the future situation in which the learner will be
functioning (facilitates transfer).

Since the appearance of the review describing the research basis for
Functional Context Education (FCE), large-scale efforts to develop FCE
courses that integrate vocational and LLN (variously referred to as
integrated, embedded, or contextualized programs) have taken place in
Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the
United States. In the UK, FCE integrating vocational and LLN is referred
to as embedded LLN. Recent research in the UK has shown that the
greater the extent of embedding of literacy into vocational training,
the greater the completion rates, achievements of qualifications, and
other important outcomes for both literacy and vocational qualifications
(Casey, et. al, 2006).

Numerous documents for developing integrated LLN and vocational
education are now available on the internet in the industrialized
nations identified above. For information about many of these various
FCE reports go to www.nald.ca/fulltext/fce/cover.htm and see Functional
Context Education:
Making Learning Relevant in the 21st Century. Chapter 2 in this report
provides information about the FCE programs in the nations identified
above.

The many projects integrating vocational and LLN demonstrate that it is
not necessary that adults with low basic skills first raise these skills
to a level thought necessary to succeed in a vocational course. Instead,
by integrating the vocational and LLN education, it is possible to
achieve what Cora Wilson Stewart called "a double purpose", adults can
improve their basic skills while also acquiring much-needed vocational
education.

References

Casey, H. et. al (2006, November). "You wouldn't expect a maths teacher
to teach plastering..." online at www.nrdc.org.uk.

Stewart, C. (1922). Moonlight schools. NY: E. P. Dutton & Co.

Sticht, T. et. al (1987). Cast-off youth: policies and training methods
from the military experience. NY: Praeger.

Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education
2062 Valley View Blvd.
El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
Email: tsticht at aznet.net