The problems identified by hospital personnel during the needs assessment phase of curriculum development were elemental. Workers could not read charts and signs indicating danger, menus, and so on. They had difficulty filling out forms and writing reports. These were general problems, not attributed to particular workers. The curricular and instructional solution adopted by the project was to provide heuristics that would make workplace-specific reading, writing, math, and other basic skills tasks more easily comprehensible. The following excerpts provide insight into how basic skills were treated in the curriculum:
Researcher: How, if at all, do you deal with ... reading problems, writing problems, and so on?
Pete: We ... do a sampling of the people that are going to receive the instruction as to reading level. And then we design the curriculum ...
Researcher: You test them? What do you do?
Pete: Yes.... So we get a general idea of what level the group is reading at, and then we design the curriculum to match that level. Now related to your other question ... how do you do the basic writing and so on. If we discover in the needs analysis that writing is a problem that they have on their jobs, we design a writing component ... where they write the things they write on their job.
Researcher: ... functional?
Pete: [Yes]. So, we're doing writing, mathematics, computers, reading, doing all four of those things. But we are not doing it from the point of view of trying to raise their reading level generally. We're doing it by finding out what they have to read.
Researcher [paraphrased]: You're not going to try to raise their reading level?
Pete: We walk in and we say we're not gonna attempt to raise people's reading level. What we're gonna do is give them a methodology for approaching problems ... ability to read what they read.... If they [want to] do GED classes ... we offer referrals ... and the Union Educational Bureau, by the way, will pay for all that.
In discussing the instructional approach adopted by the project, we focused on
one course, Reading on the Job. We decided to discuss one course rather
than all six because of the basic symmetry in approach to courses taken by the
project. Reading was chosen because of its centrality to the discourse on
workplace literacy and because it is a nontraditional program area for
vocational institutions--one for which they are likely not to have much
programmatic and instructional experience or expertise. The course overview
for Reading on the Job is shown in Appendix A.
As for other courses, the project staff developed learning modules for each
participant along with a corresponding instructor's guidebook. The modules set
forth a four step checklist--define, plan, read, and check--to the decoding of
reading materials found in the workplace (e.g., Park, Olson, & Oldham,
1991). Reading in the workplace was characterized as a task which can be
approached systematically. The reader first defines the reading problem
by asking questions such as, "What is the purpose of my reading?" Next he or
she plans a solution to the problem, by asking, "What information do I need?"
The next step is to read. This requires asking, "What cues does the format
suggest," or "What do I already know about the situation that can help me?"
The final step is to check, that is, to ask the question, "Did I accomplish
what I wanted?" Appendix B shows an example taken from the module. Using the
four-step approach, the trainee would have to solve the reading problem posed
by this breakfast menu. To read this menu, the trainee would have to identify
format cues such as bold letters, capital letters, highlighted words,
and words that appear at the top of the page or are set apart.
In the instructor's guide designed for the course, the problem-solving approach as described here was described as being robust enough to help the worker approach any reading task. Pete expressed the view (about which we remain unconvinced) that the technique was transferable into areas of reading beyond the functional (e.g., reading the daily paper). He explained as follows:
The way we approach reading, when they get done with our reading course, they're [going to] be able to read the [local paper] better. Because what we've taught is things like functional cues. If something is in bold, something as simple as it's in bold, it's probably a quick summary of what's underneath it. The thing that's in the first paragraph usually is a summary of what's gonna follow. You know, things like that are part of the reading class ...
We thought that what Pete was describing here required the assumption that one was already a fluent reader. Picking up surface features of the text as cues was efficient when one could already read. But such features would not make text any more penetrable for a poor reader or a nonreader.
Responding to a query about the nature of the compensatory devices he was describing, Pete explained as follows:
We call them contextual cues.... An example, a concrete example. You've got a paper in front of you that you can't read. And what it is [the one we use in class] is a hepatitis [I think it's a] declination.... Where you sign this, and you have said that you won't take the free hepatitis vaccination. These people pick this up, and they look at this thing, and it's got all these medical, technical terms about hepatitis-B and AIDS and all kinds of things. So we teach them this, look, where's the top of it? In big letters. Hepatitis [declination] ... what's that mean? I don't know. OK. But it's important, you know that. So you can ask somebody that. Now what's on the bottom of it? Well, it says signature. What's that mean? It means I have to sign. Oh, if you have to sign it it's important. OK that's a cue.... Now, what's underneath that? Oh ... a witness. Oh. You have to sign it and it's witnessed. This is really important. So don't sign it until you understand it. And then we try to teach them how to understand it, but you can read it and I can read it. I can't understand it. It's legal stuff, you know? So, go ask somebody. Ask somebody who can give you the answer that you're satisfied with so you know what you are signing.... And that's functional literacy, as far as I am concerned. Now you take that back to a context of your income tax, or the [local paper] or whatever, and there are some cues in there that you are finding out. The titles, for example, how things are put in paragraphs, what a first paragraph does and all that kind of stuff ... translate into a lot of other kinds of reading.
While cues do have their place in reading instruction, as we shall be
discussing later in this section, we have found no support in the literature
for their use as devices that poor readers or nonreaders can employ on their
own to improve their understanding of unfamiliar text, or to effect transfer
across text types.
Beyond the use of cues, the workers were taught how to recognize words by
analyzing their structure (the focus here was upon prefixes, suffixes, roots,
and compound words). Words chosen were workplace related, including medical
terminology. Workers were required to complete an exercise illustrative of
mastery of the ability to analyze the structure of five words, namely
subsections, semiannual, bimonthly, interdependent,
and prepare. This exercise also required them to figure out the meaning
of two compound words, namely outlook and overnight.
To complement our understanding of the approach to instruction taken in the
project, we interviewed four of the instructors, including one who had much
responsibility for teaching the reading course. The instructors were involved
in continuous improvement of the courses as the program progressed.
Fundamentally, they were expected to follow the basic instructional design set
forth in instructor guides and corresponding learner modules. They could
interpret and adopt the curriculum as they saw fit, but so far as was evident,
there was no material deviation from the basic plan that we could discern. All
students were required to take a common postcheck to indicate course mastery.
Since it was the instructional materials (e.g., learner modules and
instructor's guides) prepared specifically for the course that were eventually
going to be disseminated for their demonstration value, they were more the
focus than instructor variation.
For the two instructors who ordinarily belonged to the college staff, we were
especially interested in whether there were aspects of that role that served to
advantageous effect as they taught project classes. For one instructor, prior
experience in delivering on-site instruction within a firm was helpful. For
another, it was having to deal with special education students, who require
patience and individual attention. One theme that seemed to be common in the
approach taken by the instructors was that they tried to teach in a way that
was nurturing and anxiety-reducing. To this end, the primary strategies they
adopted were cooperative learning and self-pacing. In a small number of cases,
they allowed workers to test out of courses. This was an important concession,
since there was some evidence (gleaned from interviews and from course
evaluation sheets) that some fraction of the workers found the content to be
too easy for them. While their focus was essentially on work-related examples,
the instructors pointed out that workers were equally likely to bring examples
from home as they would from work.
How efficacious was the philosophy and approach of the project with respect to reading? To come to terms with this question, we set the instructional approach against the backdrop of a bipolar conceptual framework, consisting, on the one hand, of a conception of reading as specific literacy (reading for useful purposes) such as reading at work, and, on the other, a conception of reading as general literacy (or school literacy).
Resnick (1990) identifies useful literacy as one of six forms of literacy practice. This form of literacy involves "the use of written texts to mediate action in the world" (p. 172). It includes "reading recipes, following instructions for assembling or manipulating equipment, and consulting bus and airline schedules" (p. 173). The reader has "immediate goals" in mind, and assumes that the text "is authoritative and can successfully guide action" (p. 173). According to Resnick, the nature of the reading process is shaped by the "action-oriented stance" of the reader. Successful readers can "relate each proposition in the text to a specific set of physical objects, and plan actions on them" (p. 173). Physical objects such as diagrams are enablers.
Dealing with the question of how a person reaches this level of literacy, Resnick suggests that cognitive apprenticeships in the family are conceivable. Children practice along with other family members. Later, they develop these skills in extra-school activities. They make the read-do connection. Some types of school activities (e.g., science labs and vocational classes) enhance it. Resnick notes:
If functional literacy practices are learned mainly outside school, however, certain students--those from families who do not practice much literacy in the home or do not engage their children in such activities--can be expected not to learn them. (p. 176)
What Resnick does here is posit a socioeconomic prerequisite for the learning
of useful literacy. The learning of this literacy is mediated by the type of
family in which one grows up. If that is the case, then it constitutes one
constraint on attempts to teach workplace-related reading such as the hospital
project was attempting. The skills that workers lack should perhaps have been
acquired long ago, premised on a foundation of literacy learned in the family
and nurtured at school. There is no real substitute for this grounding--no
quick way to remedy it.
Diehl and Mikulecky (1980) make some of the same observations as Resnick from
their vantage point of workplaces. Their research indicated that about
two-thirds of the reading tasks performed at work are reading-to-do.
Text serves largely as external memory upon which workers rely as they perform
tasks. For example, a worker may consult a manual in order to adjust a
machine. The manual remains accessible. Reading often is not integral to task
performance, but workers capitalize on the fact that materials are available in
their environment. It seems as though a good strategy for workplaces would be
to make their work environments more information-rich.
As Resnick points out, Diehl and Mikulecky (1980) noted that increasingly
workers had "extra-linguistic cues" in their work environment that were
directly related to their jobs. They needed to make the connection between the
text and their material environment: "Once the correspondence between the
print and environment is understood," it becomes easier to extract information
from text (p. 225). Diehl and Mikulecky contend that workers are able to read
work-related information at about two grade levels above their assessed reading
level. They concluded that reading at work differed from reading at school, in
terms of cognitive gain and extralinguistic cues.
General reading, or reading at school, provides the second pole as we reflect
upon the instructional approach of the project. How does specific reading such
as in the context of workplaces, differ in character from more general reading?
We can understand this better by examining how reading at school is
approached.
According to Durkin (1983), the factors that are known to contribute to
reading ability and which teachers of reading should strive to enhance are (1)
extensive sight vocabularies--that is, a repertoire of words that are
automatically recognizable; (2) the ability to figure out words
independently--that is, the ability to decode new words without outside help
(requiring that teachers be knowledgeable about phonics and word structure);
(3) vocabulary and word meaning development (requiring constant additions to
the sight vocabulary); and (4) the ability to comprehend connected text,
requiring instruction that balances text-types--that is, instruction that
includes narrative discourse (story-telling), expository discourse
(explanation), and procedural discourse (how to bake a cake). Durkin suggests
that the materials supportive of successful reading instruction should include
"anything that displays print ... textbooks, library books, magazines, comic
books, signs, labels, menus, calendars, newspapers, billboards, stamps,
greetings ... " (p. 6). (This liberal conception of what constitutes
appropriate reading materials is, of course, quite different from the
functional paradigm's more restrictive definition).
Because of its centrality to literacy, general reading proficiency is one of
the cornerstones of the socialization process in the United States, as it is in
most cultures. The process of becoming literate in reading is time-consuming,
and must proceed from one's earliest formative years through the school years.
Those who fail to acquire this literacy by the adult years become handicapped.
The competencies they have missed are not easy to retrieve, nor are they easy
to substitute. Workplace literacy programs are useful, but unless they provide
generous amounts of instructional time and are broadly conceived, it is
doubtful that they can imprint upon general reading literacy.
Having briefly explored the nature of reading in its general and specific
aspects, we became better situated in order to estimate the efficacy of the
project's efforts with respect to an approach to reading instruction. A first
requirement is to characterize what the basic objective of the project was
regarding reading. From the minutes of meetings between project and hospital
staffs, it appeared that the initial problem was that some workers had
difficulty reading work-related documents (e.g., signs indicating danger,
menus, and so on). From the instructions in the instructor's guide to the
reading course, the project stance was not to try to raise the grade level
reading score of workers. Rather, it was to improve the on-the-job reading
skills of participants via the problem-solving method described above. This
approach was stated in the instructor's guide to be capable of preparing one to
approach any reading task. Further, it was expected to help workers "to
increase their confidence to seek out and understand the actual kinds of
reading material encountered day-to-day on the job." Since, as indicated
above, the project staff did not establish tightly controlled empirical
measures to ascertain gain, we have focused not on outcomes but rather on
approaches.
In pursuit of its stated goals, it is evident that the project adopted both
generic and specific reading strategies. Practical strategies (such as
reformatting the text) designed to help participants read menus and forms were
intertwined with school-like strategies (the teaching of structural analysis of
words--that is, prefixes, suffixes, roots, and compound words). To teach the
skill of structural analysis, the word transport was examined, chosen
for a functional reason--that it had to do with moving patients within the
hospital. The meaning of the prefix trans was given, as well as that of
the root port. The module suggested that breaking a word such as this
into component parts would help reveal its meaning, which would be clarified
when the word is used in context.
While it is important for workers to understand word structure, it was
questionable whether such an approach could be viable within the narrow
confines of a work setting. More promising might have been an approach that
was closer to traditional vocational pedagogy--that is, one that matches the
printed word with some practical action. The read-do connection needed
to be made (Diehl & Mikulecky, 1980; Resnick, 1990). It is unlikely that
the word transport was unfamiliar as a spoken word to any of the
workers. They would all have known its meaning. Some probably could not
recognize it in written form, and for these the question is which was the more
appropriate instructional strategy--linking the written word with the act of
transporting a patient (or more broadly, transporting goods by train or
trucks), activities within the experiences of workers, or teaching them its
etymological roots via structural analysis. The latter approach would be valid
if the intent were to show the word transport as belonging to a class of
words (transmit, transfer, translate, and
transact), and as a way to build vocabulary, but would have precluded
sole emphasis on workplace-related vocabulary, a disposition which would have
been inimical to the project philosophy.
Our discussion here points to difficulties inherent in trying to utilize
school-like techniques within a functional context frame. Teaching literacy
for transfer requires its own space, time, technique, and philosophy. One
important requirement would be that the examples extend beyond the workplace
into other facets of the workers' experiences.
Another example of combining school-like reading literacy strategy with the
functional was evident in the emphasis on so-called contextual
cues--surface features of text inherent in the text format (e.g., use of
bold type). In the context of the project, these cues appeared to be intended
not necessarily as an aid to reading comprehension but often as a way to
determine the importance of a document whose content one was unable to read
(e.g., a hepatitis declination form--exempting the workers from being
voluntarily tested for hepatitis). Conceived in this way, use of functional
cues would leave unattended the underlying problem behind poor reading. The
act of picking up the text--which is important merely from its surface
features--is, by itself, not reading. When discussed in the literature,
contextual cues are conceived somewhat more broadly than was the case in the
project--not as ways to compensate for poor reading ability, but as ways to
enhance reading comprehension.
In their discussion of instructor-reader interaction strategies, Singer and
Donlan (1989) explain that surveying the title and main headings is a way to
help students read expository text. But their intent goes beyond the
functional. They do not posit the reading of main headings as a way to
determine the importance of documents which one is otherwise unable to read (as
in the hepatitis declination case). Rather, what Singer and Donlan propose is
a dialogue between instructor and student involving prediction and verification
of the content of text. Students must make predictions about the rest of a
story by reading the main heading, or by reading the material in the first part
of the story, and then they compare their predictions with their actual
reading, followed by a discussion of which clues from the text they utilized to
make their predictions (p. 159). Students must come to understand how to make
use of cues. Use of cues in this way is viewed as a metacognitive strategy,
not as compensation for an inability to read and to comprehend.
While the project emphasized format cues only, other contextual cues that are
mainstays of reading instruction could conceivably have been employed.
Contextual cues, more broadly conceived than they were in the project, are a
counterpart of structural analysis, employed, as Durkin (1983) suggests, to
help with the problem of figuring out words independently. They are considered
to be supplementary to phonics and to structural analysis (e.g., prefixes,
suffixes, roots, and compound words). Local context is recognized as being
crucial in helping the reader to figure out the meaning of unknown words. Such
meaning is expected to be derived from syntactic cues (i.e., word order
or positional features of text) and semantic cues (e.g., using the
context and cumulative meaning of a sentence to figure out the meaning of a
word) (Alexander, 1988; Durkin, 1983; Singer & Donlan, 1989). Because no
single cue would convey meaning in all situations, it is advised that a variety
be taught. According to McCullough (1945), context cues may take the following
forms: definition, experience (e.g., the workplace), comparison and contrast,
synonym, familiar expression, summary, and mood or situation. Sternberg,
Powell, and Kaye (1983) recommend examination of external cues in the
surrounding text to figure out word meanings. Categories of external cues they
recommend include temporal (suggesting frequency or duration), spatial (dealing
with location), value (denoting worth), attributive (suggesting size and
shape), functional (suggesting purposes or actions), enablement, class, and
equivalence (e.g., antonyms and synonyms).
Cues have been shown to improve the learning of new words and to improve
reading comprehension with proper instruction. But they are more effective
with those subjects with high reading ability than those with low
reading ability (McKeown, 1985). In the hospital project, they could
conceivably have been used to add vocabulary in sentence completion exercises
as in the following example: "Coffee, tea, and cocoa are examples of _________
(beverages)."
The difficulties inherent in relying upon compensatory cues as aids to reading
have been addressed by Stanovich (1980), who points out that to cope with the
problem of poor context-free word recognition (the problem that a reader
encounters when he or she ventures into an unfamiliar domain without a
background of acquired conceptual understanding) a reader can activate an
additional "contextual expectancy process." In other words, the reader may
rely upon contextual cues. However, this is a conscious and not an automatic
process; fluent reading is supposed to be automatic. As a result, "the
conscious-expectancy process uses attentional capacity and thus leaves fewer
cognitive resources left over for comprehension operations that work on
integrating larger text units" (p. 64). Stanovich concludes that good readers
possess superior strategies for "comprehending and remembering large units of
text" and that they are "superior at context-free word recognition." They can
read across a range of domains. They identify words automatically and rapidly,
whether by direct visual recognition or phonological recoding (p. 64).
As we examined the instructional approach of the project in light of what we know about the nature of useful literacy, the nature of reading at work, and school literacy, Gee's (1988) distinction between learning and acquisition became a useful reference frame. Growing up in Mexico assures that one acquires Spanish by modeling, trial and error, practice, and assimilation. Taking Spanish 101 helps one to learn Spanish by memorizing vocabulary and by learning grammatical and syntactical rules. These two different processes lead to very different types of competencies. The question, then, is--which assumption about the nature of the hospital workers in question is likely to yield better results? The question is hypothetical, but its correct answer could potentially make a great deal of difference in the way curriculum and instruction are approached.
Gee defines acquisition as
... a process of acquiring something subconsciously by exposure to models and a process of trial and error, without a process of formal teaching. It happens in natural settings which are meaningful and functional in the sense that the acquirers know that they need to acquire something in order to function and they in fact want to so function. This is how most people come to control their first language. (p. 20)
He defines learning as
... a process that involves conscious knowledge gained through teaching though not necessarily by someone officially designated as a teacher. This teaching involves explanation and analysis, that is, breaking down the thing to be learned into its analytic parts. It inherently involves attaining, along with the matter being taught, some degree of metaknowledge about the matter. (p. 20)
Gee contends that "acquirers usually beat learners at performance while learners beat acquirers at talking about it, that is, at explication, explanation, analysis, and criticism" (p. 21). We are better disposed to learn when we have a base of acquired knowledge. Learning is the higher state of literate practice, but one cannot get there without an acquired conceptual foundation. Again, this line of argument supports the use of on-the-job training or vicarious experiences such as can be fashioned in vocational laboratories as, perhaps, strategies that are more likely to lead to improved literacy and productivity than school experiences would.
This case featured a vocational institution collaborating with a union and a
group of hospitals to deliver workplace literacy training under conditions
dictated by a federal grant. While the grant was restrictive, imposing
artificial conditions upon the college by separating workplace literacy from
technical training, it did allow somewhat idealized conditions for
experimenting with curricular and instructional ideas, not the least being a
time frame of eighteen months. This was an incomparable opportunity for a
vocational institution wishing to hone its skills in what was a new area of
programming.
While, for reasons discussed earlier, we did not focus on whether the project
achieved its stated objectives (e.g., increased productivity), we did, however,
gain insights which can help us to evaluate claims that Redwood might make
regarding its suitability as a workplace literacy provider. Measuring such
claims against hypotheses set forth earlier in the conceptual framework for
this study, the following points appeared to be supportable:
Beyond these basic capabilities, which were consistent with our hypotheses,
the college also showed, in the particular context of the hospital project,
that it could collaborate successfully not only with management but also with
labor.
We saw enough evidence in this project to be able to offer the view that
Redwood, and colleges like it, can legitimately claim to be workplace literacy
providers and to have a comparative advantage in so doing, largely on the
strength of their vocationalist traditions--their inherent ability to work
collaboratively with industry to convert workplace needs to curriculum and
instruction. Where there appeared to be tentativeness, as discussed earlier,
it was in the fashioning of instructional strategies related to reading in the
workplace. Unlike other basic skills such as mathematics or writing, which
have traditionally had a place in the fabric of the vocationalist curriculum,
reading per se is a new area. Acquiring capability in its teaching
appears to be an important challenge that these institutions must contend with
if they are to fortify their claims as providers.
In seeking to acquire capability in this program area, vocational institutions
such as Redwood have in their favor a tradition of linking theory with
practice. They could capitalize on this tradition by approaching reading
instruction on the assumption that workers possess schemata based on experience
and a store of technical knowledge and skill. Instruction could probably focus
on establishing the read-do connection between basic skills and hands-on
technical skills and on providing opportunity for practice to help activate
schemata. Reading instruction premised on technical knowledge and skill could
then provide the basis for reading instruction of a more generalizable
nature.