Abstract
What knowledge, skills and dispositions are needed by adult numeracy and literacy teachers to help their learners imagine and build better lives for themselves and sustainable futures for their children and community? What resources can teachers draw on to be able to exercise agency as a group of professionals to give voice to the needs and aspirations of their learners? Using the contemporary Australian adult numeracy and literacy context as a point of reflection, I argue that some degree of propensity to take risks is needed by teachers if they are to exercise agency as professional educators, and that the universities have a renewed role to play in creating spaces for educating risk-taking educators.
Highlights
Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows almost half of all working Australians have less than the minimum literacy and numeracy levels required to meet the demands of everyday work. (Harrison 2009) Such was the way in which many people in Australia were informed by the media about the levels of adult literacy and numeracy in Australia at the start of National Literacy and Numeracy Week (NLNW) in 2009
The results from the Survey, based on criteria developed by Statistics Canada and the OECD, do suggest that over fifty percent of those Australians surveyed in ALLS have below the ‘minimum required for individuals to meet the complex demands of everyday life and work in the emerging knowledge-based economy’ (Statistics Canada cited in Australian Bureau of Statistics 2008:5)
As argued in Black and Yasukawa, adult literacy and numeracy in Australia is at the cross roads
Summary
Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows almost half of all working Australians have less than the minimum literacy and numeracy levels required to meet the demands of everyday work. (Harrison 2009) Such was the way in which many people in Australia were informed by the media about the levels of adult literacy and numeracy in Australia at the start of National Literacy and Numeracy Week (NLNW) in 2009. This means that, while trainee-teachers may learn what is needed to manage the demands of the their immediate workplace contexts (or that which is assumed by the trainer to be the demands of the workplace), they may not be afforded the knowledge that can help them to contemplate alternate models of teaching and learning that have not yet been tried These vocational qualifications have been developed as part of the Australian Federal Government's initiative for renewal of the adult literacy and numeracy field, including its workforce. This makes it even more concerning that a capacity for future teachers to be unafraid to question the status quo, and to use theoretical tools to imagine and create new possibilities for the field, may be constrained by the particular requirements of the training package design. In Australia, in light of the trends in teachers' work as discussed in Black (this issue), defining a professional practitioner as someone who is able to do what is required of the current policy can lead an uncritical novice in the adult literacy and numeracy field to think that being a professional equates to being compliant with whatever policy is in place
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