This paper examines the degree to which British adults participating in workplace literacy courses improved their reading comprehension skills, using longitudinal data which cover the period from enrolment until between two and three years later. Learners were tested using an instrument designed explicitly for adults, with two parallel forms. For…

Language, literacy and numeracy are necessary for greater workforce participation, productivity and social inclusion. Being able to measure the level of proficiency in these skills, and any changes in the level of skills, is important for getting a sense of how well language, literacy and numeracy programs are working. Two measurement tools used…

Living in an age of communication, literacy is an extremely integral part of our society. We are impacted by literature during our infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. "Literacy for the New Millennium" includes information from specialists in the field who discuss the influence of popular culture, media, and technology on…

Evaluative information is provided on 18 completed workplace literacy classes conducted in the Seattle-King County, Washington, area for 218 limited English proficient workers. The programs were operated by the Employment Opportunities Center and the Refugee Service Federation. Participants were members of the following ethnic groups: Vietnamese,…

Investigates various influences and reasons why non-English-speaking women working in a small goods factory in Australia chose not to participate in workplace literacy courses. Presents perceptions of the nonparticipants, the course provider, the teacher, the personnel manager, and the researcher. Discusses barriers, motivation, networks and power…

The purpose of this study was to measure and compare the extent to which three groups of stakeholders in the welfare-to-work process judge a selected list of workplace topics as important for inclusion in the curriculum. Topics were derived from the 1991 report of the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS). A 45-item survey…

This ERIC/RCS Special Collection contains two ERIC Digests (brief syntheses of the research on a specific topic in contemporary education) and nine FAST Bibs (Focused Access to Selected Topics--annotated bibliographies with selected entries from the ERIC database), providing up-to-date information in an accessible format. The collection focuses on…

Mexican immigrants working at a wholesale nursery were involved in developing user instructions for a computer-based instruction system. Sixty-one Latinos with 0 to 16 years of education completed user instructions delivered on the computer, and all but 3 completed training content about the nursery. Based on objective criteria, program use was…

A curriculum designed by the Maury, Tennessee, Literacy Council to address deficiencies in English-language skills is presented. Maury County, Tennessee, is a rural area south of Nashville whose automotive industries and ethnic restaurants have immigrant populations in need of English instruction. A state 353 teacher training grant was obtained to…

This workbook is a guide for work teams focused on one part of the hiring process--interviewing potential employees. The following sections are included: (1) an overview--what can be learned from interviews; (2) constructing effective interviews--identifying the skills and qualities needed; developing appropriate questions; and gathering useful…

Three areas of research are particularly important for educators concerned with literacy in the workplace. The areas are the following: (1) the National Adult Literacy Survey results that show that for many workers there are gaps between tested literacy abilities and the new literacy demands present in the most promising jobs; (2) 2 decades of…

This document provides one-page abstracts of the 39 workplace literacy programs funded through the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Vocational and Adult Education in 1990, and a resource guide for persons involved in such projects. The funded projects focus on basic literacy skills needed in the workplace and use reading and mathematics…

This workshop manual is intended for groups in the workplace. It leads the group step-by-step through problem-solving techniques based on both critical and creative thinking approaches to describe, analyze, plan, and act on a realistic shared understanding of the real problem and workable solutions. It begins with a problem-solving curriculum…

This issue contains five articles about assessment in adult literacy programs. The first article, "Living Literacy: Rethinking Adult Learner Assessment" (Susan L. Lytle), focuses on developing alternative forms of assessment such as literacy portfolios to identify changes in four dimensions of adult literacy over the course of literacy…

This report describes the JobLink workplace literacy program conducted for employees of nine companies in Costa Mesa, California. The introduction provides background and describes the problem: one-third of the 2,870 workers had inadequate language and literacy skills. The next six chapters describe the problem, solutions, tasks, challenges, and…