Integrating Adult Basic Education with Workforce Development and Workplace Change: How National-Level Policy Makers Can Help

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Excerpted from Paul Jurmo's pdf document Integrating Adult Basic Education with Workforce Development and Workplace Change: How National-Level Policy Makers Can Help

Adult education can be a dynamic player…for improving workforce and strengthening workplaces if adult educators follow these guidelines:

1. Work-related adult basic educators need to be clear about who they are trying to serve and what those “customers” needs are.

2. Stakeholders should be actively involved via an ongoing collaborative decisionmaking process

3. Learning objectives need to be clear, realistic, relevant, based on a careful needs assessment, and tied to agreed-on standards

4. Mechanisms for individual assessment and program evaluation need to efficiently document results and enable stakeholders to make decisions about “next steps.”

5. Multiple learning opportunities need to be provided which allow learners to devote thetime they need to acheieve their learning objectives

6. A corps of well-prepared and well-supported professionals is needed

7. Efficient administrative and curricular linkages must be made between adult education and other services and opportunities within the system

8. Appropriate learning facilities and technologies need to be in place to enable busy adults to learn at convenient times and locations

9. Sustained consistent and adequate investment of resources is needed along with incentive structures, which encourage such investment

10. Mechanisms need to be put in place to protect the rights of workers

11. State-level supports are needed for local level efforts