Contextualized Literacy in Green Jobs Training

“Organizations that provide job training to lower-skilled adults through Jobs for the Future’s GreenWays initiative have found they can better prepare workers for advanced occupational training and skill development by integrating the teaching of literacy and numeracy skills into basic occupational training programs. Drawing on [the] experiences in the GreenWays initiative, JFF prepared this brief to assist program designers and literacy instructors at job training programs that serve lower-skilled adults. It explored the interrelationship of the nation’s literacy rates, the growth of middle-skill jobs, and the importance of integrating literacy skills into workforce training.

This brief focused on the model of contextualized instruction, illustrating it by case studies drawn from GreenWays programs in Philadelphia and Detroit that have integrated contextualized basic skills education into their occupational training programs. These programs used two different approaches to providing contextualized literacy: Philadelphia’s Green Job Readiness Partnership developed a customized curriculum oriented to the program’s participants and Detroit’s Green Jobs Training Program offered an off-the-shelf curriculum” (p.1). (Abstractor: Author)

“Workforce training providers must tackle the literacy gap if they are to prepare low-skilled adults for jobs that pay family-sustaining wages. Traditional approaches to Adult Basic Education can take years to build adult learners’ skills to the level that qualifies them for technical occupational training programs—time that few adults can afford to invest....Incorporating high-quality contextualized literacy that focuses on the specific skills needed to succeed in occupational training and a career is an effective alternative. Contextualization has been shown to be effective in a number of different types of programs designed to educate working adults with very low skills levels (see box, ‘Breaking Through and Accelerating Opportunity’). Training providers can use the examples in this brief to compare approaches for including contextualized literacy in their curricula in the way that best meets the needs of their organizations and the participants they serve” (p.12). (Abstractor: Author)

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2013
• Author(s): Waugh, Alexandra
• Organizational Author(s): Green Ways; Jobs for the Future
• Funding Source: U.S. Department of Labor
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Wesley Peterson
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies