Thank you Tom for your excellent message concerning the basis for vocational 
or workplace ESOL.
Your message is a "keeper" for me.

You mentioned Paulo Freire and his work and this reminded me of the book  We 
Make the Road by Walking written by Myles Horton and Paulo Freire.  This 
book is edited by Brenda Bell, John Gaventa and John Peters.  Brenda has 
been an associate at the Center for Literacy Studies and the book is about 
"these two pioneers of education for social change who came together to 
"talk a book" about their experiences and ideas."

We have been "talking a book about workplace education and I for one have 
enjoyed every minute of it.
Pat Sawyer
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <tsticht at znet.com>
To: <workplace at nifl.gov>
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 2:09 PM
Subject: [Workplace 1553] Re: VESL and such


Colleagues: The major theoretical basis for vocational or workplace ESOL is
content-based instruction which focuses upon the knowledge content in a
language, literacy, or numeracy (LLN) program, rather upon the general
processes of LLN (see reference below). In the field of reading this has
been known as teaching reading in the content areas, and generally focuses
upon teaching reading comprehension strategies and vocabulary in science,
history, social studies, etc. content classes in the school grades beyond
the first three years of education.

In 1985 I presented a paper on Literacy for specific Purposes at the Vth
European conference on language for specific purposes (LSP) in Leuven,
Belgium. LSP arose as a named field from the work of linguists, most
notably M.A.K. Halliday and his work on the functional uses of language.
However, like reading in the content areas, it focuses upon teaching the
limited domain of English specific to a limited domain such as academic
English, vocational English, economic development English and so forth. It
is similar to the many traveler's aids that teach the minimal language for
travel, such as the names of trains, types of food, how to ask for a hotel,
etc.

Here are some interesting applications of focusing upon the content used in
teaching literacy and ESOL,

In 1915 Cora Wilson  Stewart wrote a series of texts for adult literacy
learners called the Country Life Readers. In these texts she once again
placed the teaching of reading and writing within content areas of interest
to the rural populations of Kentucky such as farm improvement, good roads,
horticulture, sanitation and so forth. She said, ".each lesson accomplished
a double purpose, the primary one of teaching the pupil to read, and at the
same time that of imparting instruction in the things that vitally affected
him in his daily life" (Stewart, 1922, p. 71).


In 1917 World War I soldiers were taught English language, reading, writing,
and math using materials that incorporated aspects of camp life and military
circumstances to make it easier for the men to relate their experiential
knowledge to the new knowledge they were to gain from book reading. The
Appendix to the Camp Reader for American Soldiers is entitled Teacher's
Manual of Conversation Lessons for Foreign-Speaking Students and is the
first manual for ESL/ESOL I have found. With its focus on the work of
soldiers, it is an early Vocational English as a Second Language (VESL) and
workplace literacy manual.

In 1943 World War II soldiers were taught reading, writing, and math using
military contexts and two fictional characters, Private Pete and his buddy
Daffy to help men relate to literacy learning during war time. The
instructional material taught vocabulary and concepts about the lives and
work of soldiers, including barracks life, health concerns, military
training, and so forth. This approach was used both for native speakers of
English and for ESOL.

In the late 1940's Frank Laubach created materials for teaching reading in
India which followed Mahatma Gandhi's advice to incorporate practical,
adult themes and concerns such as health and citizenship.

In the 1960's Paulo Freire developed methods for teaching reading in the
functional contexts of adult's lives and lead them to critical
consciousness about their life circumstances and how they might go about
changing their situations.

All the foregoing were based on professional wisdom without the benefit of
much by way of what would be considered empirical research.


>From the late 1960's into 1970's Army's Functional Literacy (FLIT) R & D

program was first research program that introduced systematic methods for
studying literacy practices of personnel in various jobs and job training
programs, incorporated these practices into the design of job-related
literacy programs, and compared the effectiveness of general literacy
programs to job-related programs and found that the latter produced as much
improvement in general literacy but three to five times the improvements in
job-related literacy, which was what the programs were supposed to do. The
FLIT program was not only based on the professional wisdom of earlier adult
literacy educators it also incorporated concepts from cognitive science in
formulating the practices of "reading to do" versus "reading to learn"
based on research in psychology on a human cognitive system with various
memory systems, and it incorporated both direct instruction based on
behavioral principles of systematic instruction, pre-and post-testing of
learning, and progression based on mastery, and instruction of a
constructivist nature based on an extensive review of linguistic, computer
science (e.g., artificial intelligence), developmental psychology, and
experimental studies of reading. The program worked with both native
English speakers and with limited English speakers. The program was
externally and independently evaluated by the American Institutes for
Research and implemented in several states indicating that the methods were
generalizable beyond the R & D site.


>From the 1970's up to the present various research projects in cognitive

science reinforced the ideas making up Functional Context Education (FCE)
principles that were based on professional wisdom at the turn of the 20th
century. The principles were officially formulated in 1987 in a book
entitled Cast-off Youth: Policy and Training Methods From the Military
Experience. The FCE research formed the basis for the National Workplace
Literacy Program of the U.S. Department of Education in the mid-1980s.

The FCE Research by Victoria Purcell-Gates and colleagues at NCSALL in the
late 1990s confirmed the principle of transfer formulated in FCE  and found
that  programs that used materials from the lives that adults live outside
the classroom were more likely to stimulate the transfer of literacy from
the classroom to the "real world" of the adults. Numerous projects in India
and other nations have confirmed that making materials relevant to the lives
of adults promotes greater participation and retention in programs than do
academic oriented programs.

Since the appearance of the review describing the research basis for
Functional Context Education (FCE), large-scale efforts to develop FCE
courses that integrate vocational and LLN (variously referred to as
integrated, embedded, or contextualized programs) have taken place in
Australia, Canada, Ireland,  New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the
United States. In the UK, FCE integrating vocational and LLN is referred to
as embedded LLN.  Recent research in the UK has shown that the greater the
extent of embedding of literacy into vocational training, the greater the
completion rates, achievements of qualifications, and other important
outcomes for both literacy and vocational qualifications (Casey, et. al,
2006).

Numerous documents for developing integrated LLN and vocational education
are now available on the internet in the industrialized nations identified
above. For information about many of these various FCE reports go to
www.nald.ca/fulltext/fce/cover.htm and see Functional Context Education:
Making Learning Relevant in the 21st  Century. Chapter 2 in this report
provides information about the FCE programs in the nations identified
above.

The many projects integrating LLN with various specific knowledge domains
demonstrate that it is not necessary that adults with low basic skills need
to first raise these skills to a level thought necessary to succeed in a
vocational course. Instead, by integrating the vocational and LLN
education, it is possible to achieve what Cora Wilson Stewart called "a
double purpose",  adults can improve their basic skills while also
acquiring much-needed vocational education.

Some References

Casey, H. et. al (2006, November). "You wouldn't expect a maths teacher to
teach plastering." online at www.nrdc.org.uk.

Stewart, C.  (1922). Moonlight schools. NY: E. P. Dutton & Co.

Sticht, T. et. al (1987). Cast-off youth: policies and training methods from
the military experience. NY: Praeger.

Sticht, T. (1997). The Theory Behind Content-Based Instruction. Focus on
Basics. http://www.ncsall.net/?id=433.
Thank you Tom for this incrideble messaage.  Your response beautifully 
covers the history of
Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education
2062 Valley View Blvd.
El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
Email: tsticht at aznet.net



----------------------------------------------------
National Institute for Literacy
Workplace Literacy mailing list
Workplace at nifl.gov
To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to 
http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/workplace
Email delivered to psawyer49 at sbcglobal.net