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I would like to thank ALNARC for inviting me to speak about Training Packages and language, numeracy and literacy. I’ve been requested to provide an ‘academic perspective’ though, as the organisers also asked me to do, I shall be providing you with a broadly critical academic perspective.

What does an academic do when asked to do such a thing? He or she conducts a literature search and an analysis of any relevant references that pertain to the subject. As you’d know, and as I’ve found, there is relatively little on Training Packages in general and almost nothing from a broadly critical perspective on language, numeracy and literacy within the context of Training Packages.

I should say at the outset, therefore, that it is premature to reach any definitive conclusions about the issues which I’m speaking about today. The questions that have emerged in my mind are ones that are probably close to many of your hearts and interests. They are questions about what types of language, literacy and numeracy are going to be feasible within the framework of the Training Packages-based system and the implications these are going to have for teachers and learners within the TAFE and also non-TAFE sectors.

Having read some more recent, up-to-date references, as it is a while since I’ve read in the area, the question that sprang to mind was: If he was asked to do so, how would Paolo Freire have delivered a literacy program in the framework of a Training Package? And having done so, would he have been judged to be an effective and competent teacher of adult language, literacy and numeracy learners?

The literature I’ve read over the last couple of days suggests that the debate, as far as language and literacy goes, has become a lot more sophisticated in recent times. There are new influences, particularly of post-modernism and post-structuralism, which I won’t have time to cover in depth today. But while the debate has moved on, there are some fundamentals still in place which are not far removed from those in currency when I read around the topic some years ago.

What emerges from the literature is that there are basically two poles of adult literacy. At one end is what many analysts refer to as ‘functional literacy’, based on a skills deficit notion, with education and training programs being a mechanism to top up learners with specific skills in a particular context.

Functional literacy assumes a uni-literacy, a mono-cultural version of literacy, which is held to be value-neutral and shared across diverse social and economic sites. It is performative in nature with prescribed or predetermined outcomes - performative in the sense that it is largely assessment driven. But also performative in the sense that it is linked to a set of reductive, economic objectives relating to work, that is work for productivity, profitability and so on. Other key features of this form of literacy are reflected on the overhead (see attachment).

At the other end of the spectrum is what I’d call ‘socially critical literacy’, which you have no doubt encountered before in various forms. There are a number of gradations between these two poles which I’ve not got time to elaborate on now. A socially critical approach affirms languages, literacies and numeracies that people already carry with them into the workplace prior to any sort of work-based training or education. It tends to be reflective and problem-oriented, recognising the diversified nature of language. It holds that all language is political and contested; that meanings are negotiated between learners and teachers and the wider social context; that learning should occur in a group-based manner and be integrated across the curriculum, and delivered not as stand-alone modules or competencies; that learning outcomes are open-ended and determined through joint processes; and that there are multi-literacies, not just one literacy.

Advocates of socially critical literacies argue that they should lead to socially just outcomes and, in particular, socially useful outcomes. Useful, not in terms of the performative criteria of a particular workplace or industry or firm in which the learner is located, but useful in a broader sense - specifically for the learners themselves, while also incorporating industry, workplace and broader social needs at the same time.

Clearly, literacy in the context of the new workplace, or the ‘new work order’ as James Gee and others (1996) refer to it, requires fundamentally new forms of skill that go beyond the functional level. Anthea Taylor (1997, p.64) suggests that:

Where once there were few (formal) language or educational requirements for entry into unskilled and semi-skilled sectors of the workforce, there is now common recognition that a workforce that is multiskilled and more than merely functionally literate is essential, particularly in the light of the introduction of increasingly sophisticated technology and hazardous chemicals in the workplace.

That is just a brief overview to set a frame for what I’m now going to say. However I should point out that I’m presenting a spectrum of critical views found in the literature and that I don’t necessarily subscribe to all such views.

In the light of the continuum from functional to socially critical literacy, we need to look at where Training Packages are currently located along that continuum. ANTA has recently produced a booklet called Workplace communication: incorporation of language, literacy and numeracy into Training Packages. It opens with the statement that:

To ensure Training Packages accurately reflect industry needs, all aspects of workplace tasks must be included. Workplace communication underlies almost all areas of work to some extent. From the factory floor to the highest level of management the ability to communicate effectively influences the performance of workplace tasks. Without explicit reference to communication skills, it is possible that the specific demands of particular tasks may be overlooked in the development of standards. (ANTA n.d., p.1, my emphases)

So there is an emphasis on functional literacy, underpinned primarily by notions of performativity - the achievement of performance criteria that are linked to specific enterprise standards and geared to promote productivity within a particular workplace. Admittedly it recognises that so-called deficits do not necessarily exist just at the entry level, at the semi-skilled and unskilled level - that deficits may also exist at management level. Nonetheless, it is fundamentally a model or a view of literacy that is located at the functional end of the continuum - not necessarily at the extreme, but somewhere close to it.

The publication identifies what it calls ‘Aspects of Communication’. The term ‘communication’ is used to refer broadly to language, literacy and numeracy. One form of communication is ‘procedural’. Another is people communicating about technology - ‘technological communication’. The third form, and these are represented in the precise order that they are in the ANTA booklet, is ‘personal communication’ - people communicate about themselves, about their needs and their goals. ‘Cooperative communication’ - people communicate to work as part of a team. People communicate to fulfil the organisation’s internal requirements, defined as ‘systems communication’. They also communicate with people external to the organization - ‘public communication’ - and they also communicate when learning new skills - ‘learning communication’. These are the seven aspects of communication identified by ANTA.

There are some potentially promising elements there, for example where the text speaks of ‘personal communication’ and ‘cooperative communication’ or working with a team. Both suggest that workplace communication may have purposes other than the purely instrumental. ‘Public communication’ - working with people external to the organisation - seems to be the basis for expanding literacy beyond the narrow functional requirements of the workplace.

When I encountered these introductory statements, I was somewhat hopeful. However when I read what ANTA identifies as the purpose of those different forms of communication, I became less positive and optimistic. I’ve selected two aspects where I thought potential existed for moving closer to the socially critical end of the spectrum.

ANTA has provided a set of questions as guidance for Training Package developers to identify the communication needs of different workplaces. First, in relation to public communication, ANTA (n.d., p.3, original emphasis) suggests the following questions should be asked:

Is there interaction with the public/wider community/customers?

Do people take phone enquiries, deal with customers/clients and/or give oral presentations to members of the public or community groups?

To me, that is a rather restricted and commodified definition of public communication. It is not one that is consonant with a socially critical approach to literacy. Secondly, ANTA (n.d., p.3, original emphasis) suggests that Training Package developers ask these questions in relation to personal communication:

Do people use language, literacy and numeracy to pursue personal needs or goals? Do they need to give/listen to an explanation of personal matters which affect work? Do they need to develop career paths/individual training plans?

Again, my problem with this is that it is shifting the definition of personal communication, as it has with public communication, back to the functional end of the continuum or the spectrum. While both sets of questions recognise implicitly the integral nature of communication, the personal and public aspects of communicative relationships are fragmented and reduced to a function of workplace performativity and productivity.

What has not been identified in these notions of communication is that people also communicate about injustices and inequities in and outside the workplace, about trade union affairs, about global/national/state and local government issues, and about decisions made inside and outside the workplace. These forms of political-industrial communication are not addressed anywhere within the aspects of communication identified by ANTA.

Also no reference to, or notion of, cultural communication is included. The definitions overlook the fact that workers talk about family and community affairs in workplaces; that they discuss traditions, rituals, values in and beyond the workplace, cultural differences and cross-cultural bonds; and that they also talk about art, sport, religion, literature and music, and a whole range of other things which generate ideas that enrich their personal and productive lives.

I think some key questions need therefore to be asked about Training Packages. These have emerged from the readings I have done. The first one is: What exactly is ‘language’, ‘literacy’ and ‘numeracy’ in the context of Training Packages? There does not appear to be a common, shared and negotiated meaning of what these different terms imply for teachers and learners.

The second question that needs to be asked is: Whose language, literacy and numeracy is going to be valued within the context of Training Packages? Is it going to be that of workers, employers, culturally powerful or powerless groups, local and/or global communities? Whose literacy and numeracy and languages? As you would be aware there are multiple different ones, but at no point is this acknowledged in official discourse.

The fundamental question of what is ‘language’ is left unaddressed. Currently it is taken for granted. There’s no notion of the meanings being contested. The question of whose language, literacy and numeracy has not been asked. For example, whose English is going to be used? The guidelines refer to non-standard forms of English, but the way in which the Training Packages are developed actually flattens out differences and diversity within the workplace environment. What we are likely to end up with, I think, is a relatively standard version of English language. There is no notion of multi-literacies within or beyond the workplace. The guidelines basically ignore the whole question of the political nature of literacy.

The next question is, who decides which literacies, numeracies and languages are valued, incorporated and embedded within Training Packages or within the competencies that they assess? Then, there is the question of: Whose workplace? Not only are there different views within industry about what the ‘workplace’ requires as far as skills in language, literacy and numeracy go, but there are diverse viewpoints within workplaces and across the workforce. There is no one, common, generic workplace in existence, even within a single industry. Although ANTA is attempting to incorporate diversity through broad consultation, the problem is that you end up with a homogenised or standardised version which attempts to be everything to all, but is likely to be so generic and undifferentiated and mean nothing to most.

‘Whose workplace?’ is a question that makes me wonder about the unemployed. What is their ‘workplace’? If Training Packages are to be socially just and inclusive, we need to address this question. But from what I can see, it has not yet been broached in the context of Training Packages. Is it that their literacies are not valuable or worthwhile or legitimate because they are not affirmed within a workplace context? Again it is this tyranny of the workplace, the tyranny of a functional, performative approach to literacy which I think threatens to marginalise those groups which are already well out on the periphery.

Precisely what purpose is the language, literacy and numeracy within Training Packages intended to perform? Delia Bradshaw (1993, pp.211-12, my emphasis) really drives the point home when she argues that:

What matters is learning how texts are constructed, how to deconstruct them, and how to construct and reconstruct them for the purposes of engaging more fully in all domains of private and public life. It is, ultimately, knowing the significance of personal and political stance, knowing what constitutes stance, and knowingly choosing between stances.

That is a socially critical approach to literacy that, I think, should be reflected in Training Packages. Of course, this raises the question: Ultimately, in whose interests are these versions of language, literacy and numeracy competencies working? Will ‘workplace communication’, as it is currently constructed, simply reproduce the power relations that privilege some over others and undercut the potential for critically informed engagement in processes of democratisation in and beyond the workplace? These are major questions for adult educators.

There are several potential risks I can see emerging with respect to Training Packages. First, there is a danger that that they will move towards deficit-based notions of language, literacy and numeracy. Workers will be implicitly viewed as dysfunctional when their languages, literacies and numeracies do not serve the performative requirements of the generic workplace, because they are not producing the productivity outcomes that are expected of them. And they will be judged as deficient in terms of criteria derived from the workplace alone, criteria that value and reproduce forms of language, literacy and numeracy that ‘industry’ or, more accurately, that private enterprise and employers demand from their workforce.

The second potential risk is that the language, literacy and numeracy in Training Packages will reflect a mono-cultural version of language, literacy and numeracy. This is an issue that needs to be watched closely to ensure that people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds and people from non-English speaking backgrounds, that marginalised cultures and forms of communication are legitimised, assessed and rewarded within the context of Training Packages. Anthea Taylor (1997, p.71) suggests that as a consequence of "the application of selected (i.e. normative white, middle class) language and literacy competences in Aboriginal contexts, there are likely to be barriers for many Aboriginal people. Reporting on language and literacy competence … is likely to be … a judgment of cultural competence (and) an exercise in assimilation and surveillance."

There is a danger that language, literacy and numeracy will be decontextualised. I know that ANTA puts great emphasis on the need to contextualise the delivery of such skills but the context of learning is not the boundary of the factory or the four walls of the workplace. The context goes well beyond that particular, singular workplace within which those workers are located at the time and in which they are unlikely to spend most of their working lives. We have to move beyond the socially reductive and destructive notion that ‘context’ means ‘workplace’ or even ‘industry’.

There is a significant risk that an instrumental and performative version of language, literacy and numeracy will be embedded in Training Packages. My real concern from an educational perspective is that they are assessment driven. They are nothing more than a set of prescribed competency standards which limit the scope for negotiated learning outcomes; and which the learners, and you and others on the shopfloor or in community-based providers and TAFE institutes, have had no direct role in defining. The needs of learners are those you confront on a day-to-day basis, not those identified through some generic process of Training Package development by third parties. There is a potential risk therefore that the types of language, literacy and numeracy produced for Training Packages will be socially exclusive and culturally disenfranchising.

I would like to finish with some quotes which for me reflect the potential problems in Training Packages. In a critical evaluation of training reform over the previous decade, I’ve argued that:

The vocational curriculum has become increasingly narrow, instrumental and short-sighted as a consequence of CBT and industry-determined competency standards. CBT was initially promoted as a strategy for modernising the outmoded ‘time serving’ notion of apprenticeship training, and as a vehicle for achieving a more student-centred, vocationally relevant and socially inclusive approach to learning. In reality, however, CBT has facilitated corporate control of the curriculum to the virtual exclusion of workers and students. (Anderson 1997, p.11)

The potential exists for such tendencies to manifest themselves under Training Packages, given their intensified emphasis on assessment against competency standards. In a similar vein, Peter McLaren (1988, p.222) notes that the linking of language and literacy to the generic workplace represents "a real threat to democracy, since the possibilities for making real choices and intervening in reality are all but foreclosed when the social, political and economic consequences of reading and writing are tied to the logic of the marketplace." Moreover such linkages are likely to further disenfranchise non-participants in the labour market and, in the absence of spaces for socially critical literacies, ensure that workplaces remain deeply segmented along class, gender, racial and ethnic lines.

Training Packages are at a relatively early stage of implementation, so it would be premature to pass judgment on them. Although a critical analysis of the assumptions and tendencies inherent in Training Packages suggest they should be approached with caution by language, literacy and numeracy teachers. Research carried out by the Victorian Centre of ALNARC (Sanguinetti 2000, p. 28) suggests that scope may still exist for learning outcomes beyond the narrowly instrumental:

All of the teachers are trying to create opportunities for facilitating the development of ‘generic’ or ‘soft’ skills in the course of delivering training packages. In many cases, however, time constraints and managerial priorities allow little space for such efforts. Their attempts to broaden the training within the constraints are a reflection of the differing understandings and values attached to the notion of ‘literacy’ in the training context and the different agendas (RTO, company, the National Training Framework) they are constantly attempting to balance.

Experienced adult educators, even in what others may regard as adverse circumstances, have the skills and perspicacity to find spaces and strategies for empowering learners. It is to be hoped of course that such adverse circumstances do not arise under Training Packages.

Finally, I would like to quote from Mike Brown (2000 forthcoming) who reaches a conclusion with which I would largely concur at this stage:

Clearly the jury is still out on training packages. … It will probably turn out to be a double edged sword. As for CBT there was a great deal of very instrumental and narrow interpretations, yet after a while as teachers and trainers came to terms with it, so too creative educationally sound and effective programs were developed … From our experience … it is evident that the neoliberal reforms which have the intention of removing barriers and constraints to market competition also open up space for other kinds of creative interventions.

Possibilities may be opened up by Training Packages and, where they are, you need to take the initiative as adult educators to maximise the potential for socially critical literacies to emerge.

 

References

Anderson, D. (1997) ‘Auditing Labor’s training reforms, Education Links, 55, pp.9-12, Spring.

Australian National Training Authority (no date) Workplace communication: incorporation of language, literacy and numeracy into Training Packages, http://www.anta.gov.au/abc/default.htm

Bradshaw, D. (1993) ‘From fill-ins to foundations: changing views of literacy’, in Adult, Community and Further Education Board Victoria, Writing our practice, ACFEB, Melbourne.

Brown, M. (2000 forthcoming) ‘Training Packages in Context’, draft paper.

Gee, J. (1991) ‘What is literacy?’, in C. Mitchell and K. Weiler (eds.) Rewriting literacy, Bergin and Garvey, South Hadley, Mass.

Gee, J. P. et al. (1996) The new work order: behind the language of the new capitalism, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards.

McLaren, P. (1988) ‘Culture or canon? Critical pedagogy and the politics of literacy’, Harvard Educational Review, 58, pp.213-234.

Sanguinetti, J. (2000) The Literacy Factor: Adding value to training, Victorian Centre of ALNARC, Language Australia.

Taylor, A. (1997) ‘Literacy and the new workplace: the fit between employment-oriented literacy and Aboriginal language-use’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol.18, no.1, pp.63-79.