Background on FCE IBEST and Transition Team
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Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 3093] Some Deep Background of FCE, I-BEST, and the Transition Team
From: tsticht at znet.com tsticht at znet.com
Date: Tue Feb 24 12:02:10 EST 2009
Colleagues: In the briefing paper that Lennox prepared for the transition
team, he provides 9 items about what would make integrated education and
training work in the context of economic recovery. Number 6 called Guidance
for Program Design calls attention to the fact that some states have
integrated curriculum models that can serve as models. Number 8 deals with
Contexualized Curriculum and states: “In order to accelerate student
progress, the adult education instruction (ABE, GED, ESL) must be
contextualized to specific occupational training/high demand job
requirements. Integrated throughout are the work readiness and soft skills
required in the workplace.” The paper includes a reference to the
forthcoming paper from the National Center for Education and the Economy
(NCEE) called One Step Forward and gives Ray Uhalde as the contact.
Ray is the head of the workforce development section at NCEE. Prior to this
he was head of Employment and Training in the Department of Labor. In a
1989 report he stated: "As Thomas Sticht, Larry Mikulecky, and others have
shown, literacy skills can be learned far more rapidly when they are taught
as part of the processes of teaching job skills....A side benefit of
functional context instruction is that there is no stigma attached to
learning job skills as there can be in learning "literacy" skills. Thus the
dignity of the adult learner is safeguarded."-Ray Uhalde. Deputy
Administrator. Office Of Strategic Planning and Policy Development.
Employment and Training Administration. U.S. Department of Labor.
Washington. D.C. In: Literacy and the Marketplace. New York: The
Rockefeller Foundation. June 1989,pp. 37-38.
Later, the Department of Labor formed the Secretary of Labor’s Commission on
Necessary Skills (SCANS) and I was asked to be on the Commission. I gave a
presentation on Functional Context Education calling for integrated basic
skills and job skills on the first meeting of the SCANS. Later, the first
report of the SCANS entitled What Work Requires of Schools and stated that
“
the most effective way of learning skills is “in context,” placing
learning objectives within a real environment rather than insisting that
students first learn in the abstract what they will be expected to apply.”
In a second report, entitled Learning a Living, the Commission addressed the
needs for a lifelong learning system that “
serves all adults, including
those who lack basic education skills, and adults who did not complete high
school. Instead of having to enroll in programs labeled “basic literacy,”
these adults are offered course that teach literacy and other basic skills
in the context of job requirements for the SCANS competencies.” SCANS gives
the reference for this statement as Thomas Sticht, “Adult Literacy
Education.” Review of Research in Education, vol. 15 (1988/89).
How did I get on the SCANS commission and how did these recommendations end
up in the SCANS reports? In 1987 colleagues and I completed a book entitled
Cast-off Youth (Praeger) in which the Functional Context Education
principles were outlined and a prototype electronics assemble course with
integrated reading and math instruction for adults with reading skills as
low as the 5th grade level were presented.
That same year, Arnold Packer, of the Hudson Institute, visited me and I
briefed him on Functional Context Education. Later he sent me a letter
saying “I have just finished reading your “Functional Context Learning.” It
makes a great deal of sense to me and fits all my prejudices.” Three years
later the SCANS was formed, Packer was asked to be its Executive Director,
I was invited to serve on it, and, as indicated above, SCANS subsequently
called for contextualized teaching and learning.
Over the years a number of organizations have taken up the banner of FCE
under the label of "contextualized teaching." For instance, for more than a
two decades, the Center for Occupational Research & Development (CORD) Web
site: www.cord.org located in Waco, Texas has been involved in developing
contextualized courses for students in the K-12 system. Dale Parnell,
former President of the American Association for Community Colleges in the
United States and also a past member of the SCANS published a book with
CORD entitled Contextual Teaching Works. In a chapter on What Research Says
About Contextual Teaching he presents a review of the research on FCE that
colleagues and I reported in Cast-off Youth and notes that this research
offers a scientific base for contextualized teaching. The book provides
examples of FCE programs in various high schools in the U.S. and Canada.
Now, some twenty years later, the field of adult education and literacy is
discussing the I-BEST project and recommendations to the Obama’s Transition
Team, both of which follow curriculum development approaches that stand on
the foundations of research in the 1980s that lead to the formulation of
the Functional Context Education principles.
It takes time for research to influence policy and practice.
Tom Sticht
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 3117] Re: Some Deep Background of FCE, I-BEST, and the Transition Team
From: Lennox McLendon lennox422 at gmail.com
Date: Thu Feb 26 18:53:35 EST 2009
Thanks Tom,
It does take a while for research to have an impact. The economic crisis
and the resulting urgency to help adults gain employment with family
sustaining incomes has helped revive those lessons.
That urgency coupled with the Commission's Reach Higher American report that
validated the 90 million adults with basic skills needs is causing job
training policy makers and practitioners to appreciate the need (hopefully
read as "target the money") from the better funded job training world to
begin to talk about using significant money that will enable us to actually
provided integrated education and training services.
The House subcommittee hearing on WIA reauthorization this morning hosted
seven witnesses from adult education (Cheryl Keenan at DAEL), the Government
Accounting Office, a local Arizona WIB, the National Governors Association,
Service Employees International Union, the New York Literacy Council, and a
local California WIB. Everyone except GAO spoke to the importance of
intergrated education and training/career pathways. Mr. Hinojosa (D-TX),
the Chair, in his opening statement spoke to building on the success of
career pathways.
His remarked followed his repeating President Obama's State of the Union
challenge for every person to complete one year of college or post secondary
education. "Eighty to ninety million adults lack the basic skills to answer
the President's call," he said.
As an individual, I have been convinced, probably from reading Tom's
research and from my experience as an adult ed teacher that it is easier to
teach reading and math in a context, especially in a work context, than
using unfamiliar contexts--I still shutter when I remember teaching ABE in
rural North Carolina using a work book example of getting an apartment in
Chicago.
Even though I was convinced, we never had the motivation and significant
funding to launch. Now we have both.
And as a side note, Ray Uhalde has left NCEE and returned to the Department
of Labor and to the Employment and Training office and we now call him "Mr.
Stimulator' because part of his responsibility is the Stimulus/Recovery
guidance.
Because of his work at NCEE he is well versed in integrated education
and training. In fact he was with me when we met with the Transition Team.
Even so, I appreciate Tom recounting Ray's words from the 1989 report and
just to make sure, I am sending Ray a copy of those words as a reminder.
Thank you Tom for having such a good memory.
Lennox
