Literacies Required for a 21st Century Workforce: Preparing Youth and Adults for Proficiency in the Academic, Technical and Cultural Literacies Required by a Complex Work World -- T.Sticht,2-22-05

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[This paper was delivered at the Ohio Career - Technical and Adult Education Leadership and Policy Forum February 22, 2005. It can be found at the Ohio Department of Education website. A direct link to the file is here: Literacies Required for a 21st Century Workforce.]

[Table of Contents:]

Tom Sticht International Consultant in Adult Education

Contents

Part 1. Functional Context Education Reforms Needed in High Schools, Community Colleges, and Adult Basic Education

Part 2. Functional Context Education Principles and Practices: Three Online Resources

Part 3. Impact of FCE on Federal Government Projects: SCANS, EFF, and DOL ESOL Education

[Excerpt from section on ABE:]

Functional Context Education in ABE

Following Functional Context Education principles, which call for integrating basic skills education with important content area knowledge and skills, more rapid progress can be made in educating youth and adults to meet the needs of the new world of work than is typical of sequential programs in which basic academic skills are first raised to some assumed necessary level before the adult can obtain the education and training needed. Functional Context Principles can be applied to skill and knowledge activities such as:

1. education on microenterprise development so youth and adults can learn how to become entrepreneurs and work towards economic self-sufficiency;

2. job skills training so that displaced workers in unskilled jobs can be efficiently cross-trained into better paying jobs that do not suffer from outsourcing;

3. financial literacy so that once employment at a self-sufficiency level is achieved adults can be better consumers in various domains and manage their money better so they can begin to invest in wealth accrual,

4. health literacy so that individuals and families can take better care of themselves and access affordable, competent medical care;

5. workplace literacy so that employed and under employed workers can acquire skills for upward mobility or transfer into better paying jobs.

Why is FCE important for youth and adult education? Unlike children, who tend to do things to please their parents or teachers, youth and adults will usually want to understand the functional utility of investing time and mental energy in learning something. With respect to out-of-school youth and adults then, FCE focuses on improving

(1) Participation in adult education programs by making explicit the relationship between what students want to learn, what is being taught and its application in the contexts that the person will be functioning in after the educational program, this promotes increased motivation;

(2) Achievement in learning and transfer by ensuring that instruction relates to the learner's prior knowledge in such a way that the learner can function within the learning situation and improving transfer by deriving instructional contents as much as possible from the future contexts in which the person will apply the learning, and

(3) Prevention of learning problems in future generations by designing youth and adult programs that maximize the intergenerational transfer of the adults' new skills and attitudes about education to their children.