Abstract
The years 2003 – 2013 marked a coming-of-age in the adult literacy field in Canada, as it reconciled the politics of international literacy surveys and their accountability regimes with the actualities of literacy work among people caught in the nets of neoliberal economics. The concepts of policy networks, powerful literacies and workarounds are used to capture how educators attempt to escape or repair the effects of standardized accountability regimes to create new networks of adult literacy practice that reflect local learning needs and interests. The nexus of this struggle suggests consequences for the work of all educators within an emerging ‘new precariat’ and downgrading of public education spaces.
Highlights
There is growing recognition among literacy educators and scholars who work in contexts as diverse as schools, communities and post-secondary adult learning programs that global education policy discourses are finding their way into their settings, shaping ‘what counts’ as literacy in instruction as well as how literacies will be assessed and programs and educators made accountable (Ball, 2012a; Hamilton, 2014)
While some of the policy discourses and texts presented in this paper cover well-traveled terrain for adult literacy educators, the goal is to consider these in light of the present moment, its uncertainties, and the possibilities for new conversations about literacy research, practice and social action
Literacy and Essential Skills (LES)/IALSS discourses traveled and shaped ‘what counted’ as literacy in powerful ways, helped along by technologies of categorization worked into compelling sound bytes, such as the “40%” story
Summary
There is growing recognition among literacy educators and scholars who work in contexts as diverse as schools, communities and post-secondary adult learning programs that global education policy discourses are finding their way into their settings, shaping ‘what counts’ as literacy in instruction as well as how literacies will be assessed and programs and educators made accountable (Ball, 2012a; Hamilton, 2014). Understanding the construction of these policies, how they travel and their consequences for democratic access to learning, constitutes a promising new terrain for inter-sectoral literacy research It is in the spirit of cultivating these conversations that I describe adult literacy policy and practice in Canada from 2003 – 2013. The time frame captures the rise and intensification of regimes of international adult literacy measurement, as well as accountability and curricular frameworks that define what counts as literacy, its purposes and ‘whom is worthy of investment’ (Ball, 2012b) in educational programs These policies do not unfold in a vacuum; adult literacy educators and organizations are significant actors in adult literacy policy networks (Hamilton, 2014), engaging at times in strategic alignment with national and international governing bodies, and in creative forms of resistance, forging new spaces for innovation and educational inclusion. Educators in other sectors may recognize similar policy developments in their own settings, opening conversations about the workings
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