.

I want to begin by noting that literacy is important to me. I’ve just completed ten years on a Ph D that has explored the place of literacy in my life and professional practice. I’ve looked at how my identity – or my identities – have been shaped by (if I may borrow from Shirley Brice-Heath 1986) my ‘ways with words’ and the ‘ways with words’ of the many others that have influenced me through personal association and through the printed word. I still think of myself as a teacher and adult education practitioner. I am also a manager, a researcher, a writer and a poet. Words and written words in particular, are a very important part of my life. They are important personally as well as professionally. So I value literacy and I carry this value (along with many others) into all of my interactions as an industry training consultant and training provider.

I make this point as a preface (or preamble) to my first substantive point, which is that not everyone else values literacy the way that I do. One of the dangers with believing passionately about something is that it is then easy to fall into thinking that everyone else believes the same; or thinking that at least they ought to. Surprisingly, not everyone believes in literacy. For Believers, like some Believers in God, it is difficult to imagine that there are some (perhaps many) people who seem to lead quite happy and fulfilling lives despite (or perhaps even because of) their disbelief.

That not everyone believes in literacy (or education for that matter) is an important point when we begin to explore the place of literacy in workplaces – or Training Packages. Despite our belief, our conviction, despite what we know to be true about the importance of literacy in workplaces (or Training Packages) others may not share our belief. Our ‘truth’ is not the same as theirs.

Secondly I want to lend support to the notion that there are many different literacies. What we know (and believe in) as literacy may be quite different to what other people know. Certainly we find in our workplace practice that each workplace has its own literacies – and they are rich and subtle and complex all at once. They are also multiple, even within one workplace there are multiple ‘ways with words’, multiple literacies; the engineers talk a different language to the trades. The trades people have a different language and a different culture to the non trades workers. The accountant and the accounts clerk may share a literacy that is different to those of others in the workplace but even within their discourse there are significant differences. The clerk, after all, is not an accountant (she’s not a CPA). And so on it goes, there are multiple languages and multiple literacies even before we begin to consider (as I am sure Lynda Wyse will highlight) the diversity of multiple ethnicities and nation-cultures we find in many Australian workplaces.

Our experience has been that it is important to be respectful of these local literacies. What we do in our training needs to engage with, value, and where possible enrich these literacies. Back in 1992 I wrote a poem about Workplace Literacy, I’d like to share it with you here.

 

On Workplace Literacy

 

Scene: At the job-site workers are engaged in collective problem solving …

George: (peering anxiously at the job)

I haven’t seen one like this before.

Wally: No, me neither.

George: What about you Wazza? You seen one of these before?

Wazza: Yeah, I seen one like that at Rutherglen Road. A bit different but. Ya need a proper literacy for them.

George: Ah shit! I haven’t got a literacy on me.

You got one?

Wally: I’ve never had one!

Wazza: My ol’ lady had a home-made one.

George: Well she’s not here is she? We better bloody get one.

(leaning away from the job and shouting)

Macka! Have a look in the blue tool box and chuck us up a literacy will ya …

… What do ya mean I’ve gotta come down. It took me fifteen years to get up here! …

Ahh, bullshit, haven’t ya got one ready, pre-bored? …

Yeah, in twelve mill. …

Yeah, in stainless. …

Yeah, give us a look. …

No! That’s no bloody good, it won’t fit!

The final point about the ‘fit’ is only partly tongue in cheek. If it doesn’t ‘fit’ literacy won’t be perceived or embraced as relevant or worthwhile (regardless of how important we think it is). The danger here is that we can’t really teach what we don’t really know and we tend to teach that which we know best. Often our most important teaching is wrapped up in the things we do unconsciously, the language we use, the texts we create and value, the ‘hidden curriculum’ that can be so much more powerful than what we think we are teaching. My point here is that ‘we’ as adult educators, as trainers, as ‘literacy people’ or ‘language teachers’ or ‘communication facilitators’ – whatever ‘tribe’ we may claim membership of – we also have our ways with words and (for the most part) they are different ways to those of industry and workplaces. When our own ‘ways with words’, our culture, class and identity are different to those of the people with whom we are engaging we can be giving powerful demonstrations which can be all the more powerful if they are also unconscious.

The language of educators, is not, for the most part, the language of industry. Nor I would suggest is the language of training and Training Packages. Indeed it seems to me that much of the peculiar acronym rich language of the training industry in Australia - a kind of TAFESE - is pretty much restricted to the training industry and its own bureaucracy. It is certainly not the language of any workplace where we have been engaged. As my colleague Crina Virgona has noted:

"the industry standards weight skills, prioritise processes and profile elements using some generic dip stick based on the way things usually happen in industry. But nowhere ever seems to be usual." (Virgona 1996 p.25)

The generic language of packages, competencies and standards needs to be made meaningful in each particular industry or workplace context. We know from our study of language and discourse that meaning grows out of context and social interaction. This is also how meaningful curriculum and learning programs evolve – through engagement with people in a genuine context, with real issues to address and challenging problems to solve.

In our workplace programs we don’t teach ‘literacy’ or ‘language’ per se. We are teaching manufacturing and warehousing processes, and Occupational Health and Safety and Frontline Management skills, all sorts of things. For the most part the focus isn’t on language and literacy - or even workplace ‘communication’. The interest is in engaging with people to address the particular interests and concerns that they have in that workplace. There are inevitably multiple agendas, tensions and contradictions between the stakeholders involved. I need to note here that (in our experience) a shared commitment to literacy is not the thing that binds them together. As I have said, they might not have much faith in ‘literacy’ at all (and even less in our particular literacy).

However if we can identify questions, issues, concerns and problems that are important to the people involved (even when the stakeholders have different points of view) then we have the seeds to grow a learning program. As we investigate, clarify, question and explore the issues we find ourselves using language, ‘doing’ language, and ‘doing’ literacy as well. Through engagement with genuine purposes and with practice the skills develop. With sensitivity, patience, craft and persistence we can cultivate the voices, strengthen the tongues and also, most importantly, fine tune some of the ears. We want to get the multiple literacies engaged with one another, listening to and learning from one another, enriching one another.

This approach situates our practice deeply within the workplace context. The curriculum is ‘home-grown’, tailored to the particularities of each circumstance and what ‘counts’ as competence, or ‘literacy’, or excellence, is shaped by the context. However this work is not characterised by functional reductionism. The approach is grounded and pragmatic but it is not without vision or ideals. Engaging with workers on genuine issues of concern, to themselves and to their managers, provides plenty of opportunities for broadening horizons, stretching comfort zones and challenging tacit assumptions.

This kind of educational practice is not easy. It is challenging virtually all of the time and daunting on occasions. It calls for a sophisticated repertoire of professional skills and apptitudes on the part of teachers/trainers. There is not the scope in this paper to explore these issues although we have written about them elsewhere (see Sefton 1993, Waterhouse & Deakin 1995, Waterhouse 1996, Virgona 1996, Sefton & Waterhouse 1997, Waterhouse & Sefton 1997, Virgona, Waterhouse & Sefton 1998). In particular, the ANTA funded ‘best practice’ documentation on the Opening Doors project (Virgona et al 1998) and the earlier WELL funded report, Breathing Life into Training (Sefton, Waterhouse & Deakin 1994), provide detailed accounts of this type of educational practice. We believe it is worth striving to ‘open doors’ and to ‘breathe life into training’.

I want to close by making specific reference to the new Training Packages and their scope for the type of approach I am advocating. The real value and impact of Training Packages will be determined, not so much by what they specify, include, or leave out. Their true value will be determined by the ways educators, and the other stakeholders involved, choose to use them. For the most part it is up to the educators to take the lead and show what might be possible. Like any document, a Training Package can be read in multiple ways. Recently (with Bruce Wilson and Peter Ewer) I wrote a review of research for the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER). In that review we reported the need for a paradigm shift in vocational education in Australia. We summarised the required shift as a move from ‘a focus on predetermined content for delivery towards ‘dialogue with the stakeholders on design for effective learning’.

In some respects the Packages provide greater flexibility and scope for educational innovation and creative program design than was the case with the former accredited modular curriculums. The Packages specify endpoints, in terms of endorsed competencies and standards, but they do not specify educational methods, or the multiple ways the goals may be reached. The Packages can be read as creating the space for innovative educators to explore and colonise. There is plenty of scope for dialogue on design and there is also scope for exploring languages and literacies but they may not be the languages and literacies we are most used to. We may need to restrain (and re-train) our urge to teach and cultivate our capacity to listen and to learn from the multiple voices and tales of the workplace.

 

Bibligraphy

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Cooney, R. 1993 Learning from Experience in the Integrated Curriculum, Critical Forum, Vol.2, No.2, September.

Sefton, R. 1993 An Integrated Approach to Training in the Vehicle Manufacturing Industry in Australia, Critical Forum , Vol.2, No.2, September, pp.39-51.

Sefton, R, Waterhouse P.& Deakin R. (eds) 1994 Breathing Life into Training: A Model of Integrated Training, National Automotive Industry Training Board, Doncaster, Victoria.

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