Designing adult curriculum

1Collaborating with Students

to Build Curriculum thatIncorporates Real-Life Materials

Charissa Ahlstrom

8Values and Beliefs: The World

View Behind Curriculum Amy Prevedel

14A Conversation with FOB

What Works for Adult ESL StudentsHeide Wrigley

18One Classroom, Two

Languages: Adult BilingualCurriculum DevelopmentKay Taggart and Sara Martinez

22Same Curriculum,

New Mode of DeliveryJane Martel

26Changing a State’s Approachto Curriculum: Insight from

Oregon’s EffortsDennis Clark

30Creating Curricula for

Challenging CircumstancesBarbara Garner

32Not By Curriculum Alone

Mary Lynn Carver

38All About NCSALL

39Blackboard

40New From NCSALL

CurriculumDevelopment

WORLD EDUCATION NCSALLVolume 6, Issue C • September 2003

Collaborating with Students to Build Curriculum thatIncorporates Real-Life Materialsby Charissa Ahlstrom

M y formative experiences as a teacher of English forspeakers of other languages (ESOL) occurred 10 yearsago, as I began teaching in and coordinating Inglés

Para la Comunidad, a church-based ESOL program serving LatinAmerican immigrants in New York City. The program’s founderswere committed to shaping the program around a particular under-standing of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. One of their focuseswas on Freire’s premise that a liberating education needs to be“co-intentional” (Freire, 1972, p. 56). They

Focus onBasicsI N T H I S I S S U E :

CONNECTING RESEARCH & PRACTICE

continued on page 3

2 SEPTEMBER 2003 • NCSALL

Focus onBasics

F ocus on Basics is the quarterlypublication of the NationalCenter for the Study of Adult

Learning and Literacy. It presents bestpractices, current research on adultlearning and literacy, and how research isused by adult basic education teachers,counselors, program administrators, andpolicymakers. Focus on Basics is dedicatedto connecting research with practice, toconnecting teachers with research andresearchers with the reality of the class-room, and by doing so, making adultbasic education research more relevantto the field.

All subscription and editorial correspondence should be sent to:

Focus On BasicsWorld Education44 Farnsworth StreetBoston, MA 02210–1211e-mail address: [email protected]

Focus on Basics is copyrighted, but weurge readers to photocopy and circulatethe publication widely. When reprintingarticles, please credit Focus on Basicsand the National Center for the Studyof Adult Learning and Literacy.

Editor: Barbara GarnerLayout: Mary T. White Illustrator: Mary T. WhiteProofreader: Celia Hartmann

Focus on Basics is published by theNational Center for the Study of AdultLearning and Literacy (NCSALL).NCSALL is funded by the EducationalResearch and Development CentersProgram, Award Number R309B60002,as administered by the Office of Educa-tional Research and Improvement/National Institute of PostsecondaryEducation, Libraries, and LifelongLearning, U.S. Department of Education.

The contents of Focus on Basics do notnecessarily represent the positions orpolicies of NCSALL or the NationalInstitute on Postsecondary Education,Libraries, and Lifelong Learning; WorldEducation; the Office of EducationalResearch and Improvement; or the U.S.Department of Education, and youshould not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

Welcome!Curriculum is at the heart of adult basic education. It reflects our educational

philosophy and beliefs about the goals of education. What are the different philo-sophical approaches to curriculum? What does research tell us about curriculum? Howdo teachers, programs, even states go about creating curriculum, and what lessoncan we learn from them? In this issue of Focus on Basics, we explore those questions.

In our cover article, Massachusetts teacher Charissa Ahlstrom describes how shedevelops her curriculum as she goes, based on her students’ interests, working withina loose framework developed by her program. She brings in “real life” materials thatconnect the classroom to students’ day-to-day lives. The classroom-to-real-life con-nection is important, according to research teams led by Victoria Purcell-Gates andHeide Spruck Wrigley (see pages 5 and 13). How do you bring the outside into yourcurriculum?

Different approaches to curriculum reflect different world views, writes AmyPrevedel in her overview of key curriculum theories (see page 8). She describes threemajor categories of curriculum — traditional, learner-driven, and critical — andthe strength and weaknesses of each. Into which category does your approach fall?

Kay Taggart and Sara Martinez help teachers in El Paso, Texas, understandhow to optimize the impact of bilingual curricula (see page 18). The judicious use ofEnglish along with students’ native language leads to conceptual understanding andcommunicative competence. Wrigley’s research (page 13) reinforces this: students inclasses of English for speakers of other languages had higher gains when they shareda language and the teacher used the language to give instructions or to clarify points.

How does curriculum change when the mode of delivery changes? That’s theissue Jane Martel and her colleagues faced when Kentucky’s professional develop-ment for adult basic education went online. Benefit from the lessons they learned byreading the article that begins on page 22. And while Kentucky was converting itsprofessional development curriculum, Oregon was revising its adult basic educationcurriculum. How does a state change curriculum? It takes policy, practice, and pro-fessional development. Teacher Dennis Clark shares his experiences as a leader inthat process in the article that starts on page 26.

Sometimes the context has a huge impact on the shape a curriculum takes.That was the case in Guinea, West Africa, where I worked with World Educationcolleagues to develop a basic literacy program for adults. Turn to page 30 to read abouthow we managed to reflect our educational values in a resource-poor environment.

When your learners are not making the progress they should, it’s time to look atcurriculum, writes Mary Lynn Carver, a teacher in Illinois, in the article that beginson page 32. Curriculum change in her program spread from individuals to the system,and encompassed not just what was taught but how classes were scheduled.

Whatever your philosophy and approach to curriculum, we hope this issue providesyou with insights and resources you need to strengthen your program.

Sincerely,

Barbara GarnerEditor

Focus onBasics

NCSALL • SEPTEMBER 2003 3

Real-Life Materialscontinued from page 1

interpreted this to mean thatstudents and teachers shouldengage in dialogue, investigatingthemes as equals and creatingnew understandings of theworld together. The curriculumhad to address student needs,reflect collaboration betweenthe learners and the teachers,and include regular studentevaluation.

Ever since then, I’ve tried to create curricula that reflectcollaboration between the studentsand me. Today, my curriculumincludes student-identified themescombined with structured languagepractice, and an emphasis oncommunication. Sometimes I usethe themes in a Freirean way, asways to enter into an examination ofunderlying power structures. I oftenuse the themes more simply as a wayto ensure that students are learningcontent that matters to them. I tryto use a wide variety of material andmedia, prioritizing student-createdtexts and materials that studentsmight encounter in their daily lives.In this article, I’ll explain why andhow I do this.

The Students’Perspective

In the orientation we provided tovolunteers at Inglés Para la Comunidad,we shared this story from Pedagogy ofthe Oppressed (Freire, 1972). Freiredescribes an educator who wasworking with Brazilian tenementresidents and wanted to do a lessonon alcoholism. The teacher showedthe tenement residents a picture of adrunken man and three men talking,and asked them to comment on the picture. Rather than commentnegatively on the alcoholism, theresidents said:

The only one there who is pro-

ductive and useful to his country isthe souse who is returning home afterworking all day for low wages and who isworried about his family because he can’ttake care of their needs. He is the onlyworker. He is a decent worker and asouse like us” (p. 111).

Freire used this example to dem-onstrate how teachers should begin“thematic investigations” (p. 112). Ilike this story because it reminds menot to assume that I know my students’perspectives or needs with regard to a particular theme. Auerbach (1992)also stresses the importance of thiscollaborative process of identifying“the real (rather than imagined)issues of each group” (p. 1).

It’s easy to get carried away withmy own excitement in creating cur-riculum or with my own perspective onan issue. Once, when I was teaching aunit on shopping, I asked the studentswhat problems they encountered atstores. One student complained thatcashiers had treated her unkindlybecause she used food stamps. Hearingthat, I immediately planned to havethe students practice writing letters to a manager. But then I rememberedthat I should pose the question to thestudents and brainstorm ideas so wecould collaboratively reach solutions.

They said they were more inclinedto talk to the manager immediately,so we practiced conversations, inaddition to brainstorming multipleways to respond to the situation.

At Inglés Para la Comunidad,we did not consider formal grammarinstruction to be ineffectual (Krashen& Terrell, 1995), but, at the sametime, grammar was not an end in itself. Communication was theprimary focus: we worked on grammarwithin the context of the themesbrought out by the students; and wealso addressed grammar in its role asan aid to effective communication. Ifstudents had difficulty with the pasttense, and we were discussing health,we had students share past experiencesat the doctor, in the hospital, andhow they dealt with illnesses in theircountry. We used these contexts tointroduce or review past tense forms,and examined how grammar issuesimpeded their effective conversationand writing.

Program FrameworkI currently teach ESOL at the

Adult Learning Program (ALP) of theJamaica Plain Community Centers, inBoston, MA. I am teaching a class of

My Definition of CurriculumUnderlying my use of the term “curriculum” are two interrelated

assumptions. First, building on my understanding of Freire (1972), I believe that curriculum is not neutral. The curriculum I use supports thedevelopment of English language skills. It also instills values and politicalviews. This transmission of knowledge and values is both explicit andimplicit. I also agree with Cornbleth’s understanding of curriculum (1990) as a “contextualized social process.” Curriculum includes not only the entiretyof activities, methods, materials, and physical and social environment of the whole learning center, but also the dynamic processes that shape andchange these components. Multiple bodies and forces, for example, the staff, the broader sociopolitical forces, a program’s funders, the studentsthemselves, as well as community and national or international events,shape these processes. While the term “curriculum” can refer to the entirety of learning occurring within a center, in my article I often use the term torefer to the environment of my class, including students’ input alongside the program’s criteria for my level.

—Charissa Ahlstrom


Focus onBasicsadvanced beginners (level two of sixlevels of ESOL); the lowest abilitylevel in the class is SPL 2-3 asmeasured by the Basic English SkillsTest (BEST) and the Arlington Edu-cation Employment Program (REEP)writing assessment. My students are from Haiti, Somalia, and LatinAmerica; their educational levelsrange from some higher educationto only three years of education. Myclass is held three evenings a week fora total of eight hours a week. We haveclasses throughout the year,with on-going entry. We donot have exact “sessions,”although September, January,and June emerge as times ofgreater transition for studentsentering, leaving, and advan-cing to higher levels withinthe program.

In our program, the ESOLteachers have created levelguides that identify whatstandards we use to advancestudents to the next level.These lists include such itemsas “demonstrates familiarity[with] and usage of simplepresent and present progressive” and“able to use a bilingual dictionary.”Teachers created the original check-lists a number of years ago. Each year,the teachers work together to “tweak”the lists so that they reflect thecurrent students’ needs, adjustingthem if students’ language needs havechanged significantly. The levelguides are helpful tools to use whentalking to students and to otherteachers about students’ progress, aswell as for initial placement. We alsouse these lists to guide, but not dic-tate, language and skill instruction ateach level. The teacher and the classdetermine the manner in which aclass covers these skills and language.

Soliciting Themesfrom Students

I build curricula by solicitingthemes from students and combiningthem with language skills typical of

our program’s level two, using ourlevel guide as the reference. I use avariety of structured activities, suchas checklists (with pictures) or brain-storming, to discover what themes areinteresting or important to students. I also gain ideas informally, noticingwhich topics engage students emo-tionally. For example, during a recentconversation about what people didover the weekend, one woman told usthat her car was stolen. This sparkedan active discussion, with many

students recounting their experiencesof crime, and sharing advice andsuggestions on crime prevention. Classmembers were very concerned, so I in-cluded crime prevention as a subsequentfree-writing and conversation topic.

Once I have ideas about students’wants and needs, I follow the exampleof a colleague and place the themeson a list and ask students to vote onwhich topic to cover next. When Ifinish that unit, which may take any-where from six to eight weeks, the listgoes back up, the students add moretopics if they like, and they vote again.(Since they are level two students,sometimes I put pictures up next toitems on the list to help them decipherthe vocabulary.) This past year, thestudents concluded most thematic unitswith projects. For example, at the endof a unit on maps and directions, thestudents composed directions to theirhomes, and we all used one student’swork when she invited the class over

for dinner. At the end of a unit onreading the newspaper, the studentscreated their own newspaper, writingcolumns, horoscopes, an advice col-umn, and drawing cartoons.

Spontaneous themes sometimesemerge from my own reading of ourclass dynamics, or when I want to em-phasize alternatives to the dominantUS culture. For example, I often high-light Muslim culture and holidays andask Muslim students if they are willingto present their traditions, since their

peers have expressed a lack ofknowledge of the words mosque,Muslim, and Ramadan, andwhy students leave the roomto pray. If difficult or large-scale political or news eventsoccur, I provide time in class todiscuss and explore them, anddevelop them further as themesif students are interested. If adifficult issue has arisen in class,such as an offensive commentor a conflict between students,I try to address it quicklythrough the curriculum and in a class discussion.

Materials Based on the themes and goals

the students have chosen, I use what-ever materials are needed to buildstudents’ abilities to address theirgoals: this often includes what I call“real life” material, but not necessarilyor exclusively. The term “real-life”implies to me certain survival-level andpractical themes related to daily lifein the community, such as shopping,getting jobs, and transportation, whichare often — but not always — thethemes students choose. Others usethe terms “real life” and “authentic”fairly interchangeably, and apply themto a wider range of materials. Nunan(1988) uses the term “authentic”materials to describe those that “reflectthe outside world,” and “have beenproduced for purposes other than toteach language” (p. 99). Purcell-Gatesand colleagues (2001) describeauthentic materials, or learner-

“I build curricula bysoliciting themes from

students and combiningthem with language skillstypical of our program’slevel two, using our levelguide as the reference.”

Focus onBasics


contextualized materials, as printmaterials that occur naturally in thelives of learners outside of their adulteducation classrooms (p. 19). Someobvious examples are newspapers,magazines, bills, maps, job applications,or novels. Radio broadcasts, music,television, or videos can be consideredauthentic “listening” materials, andan important element of ESOL.

I also use technology — mostlycomputers, but occasionally taperecorders, cameras, or camcorders aswell — for real life purposes. While Ioccasionally use an ESOL software pro-gram to reinforce a theme or languageskill in a traditional “school” way (fora drill, for example), I focus on creatinglessons that allow learners to use thecomputer in ways they want to outsideof the classroom. For example, mystudents have set up e-mail accounts,looked up information from theircountries, examined web sites createdby other ESOL learners, contactedlegislators, learned games, practicedtyping, and typed their own writingusing the computer.

I use real life materials to connectfurther the theme the students havechosen to their learning goals.Widdowson (1990) points out that itis not the text or source itself thatfosters student learning, but ratherstudents’ engagement with it. Poorlyselected or presented authentic —real life — materials can be irrelevantor inaccessible to students. Collab-orating with students to choose themesand materials is an important aspect ofensuring that materials are meaning-ful to the learners, but so is ensuringthat the materials are accessible.

What It Looks LikeOnce the class has decided upon

a topic, I ask the students for moredetails. For example, my studentsrecently voted to review maps anddirections, so I asked them what mapsthey found difficult, and which onesthey wanted to practice. A few saidthe “T” (Boston subway) map waspretty easy, but the Massachusetts or

The Impact of Use of Authentic Materials and Activities

The Literacy Practices of Adult Learners Study (LPALS), sponsored byNCSALL, looked at changes in the literacy practices of adults as a result ofattending literacy classes. Students who participate in classes that includeauthentic, or learner-contextualized, materials and activities are more likely to say they had started new literacy practices or had increased the amount of time spent engaging in literacy activities outside of school. This was trueeven when the researchers controlled for (or accounted for) students’ literacylevels and the amount of time they had been attending class.

When one looks closely at the questionnaire and interview data, many ofthe students in the LPALS reported that they began, increased the frequencyof, or stopped specific reading and writing practices when their lives changedin some way. These life changes brought with them different types of texts,different purposes and requirements for reading and writing, and differentinclinations to read and write. New mothers began writing to family membersfor the first time after their children’s births. Immigrants found new types oftexts available for reading in their new country. When children began school,parents began receiving letters and directions from school authorities, manyof which required written responses. New jobs meant having to learn how to read and write different types of materials, including, for example, bus ortrain schedules. Moving away from home meant reading and paying bills forthe first time. Literacy practices (actual reading and writing in life) are alwaysinterwoven with peoples’ lives and the ways in which they are lived. Classesthat were sensitive to the changing nature of students’ lives outside schoolwere seen as doing a better job of supporting students in their learning ofnew uses for reading and writing.

With these findings, the researchers are able to provide empiricaljustification for the beliefs of many adult educators: Bringing the lives, needs,and interests of the students into the classroom is an integral part of bestpractice. Creating Authentic Materials and Activities for the Adult LiteracyClassroom, A Handbook for Practitioners, a book designed to help teachersturn these findings into action in the classroom, by the LPALS research teamof Erik Jacobson, Sophie Degener, and Victoria Purcell-Gates, is availablenow from NCSALL. Access the report online at http://ncsall.gse.harvard.edu,or contact Caye Caplan by phone at (617) 482-9485 to order a printed copy for a small charge. Additional articles based on this research are available inVolumes 4D (pp. 19-22) and 3D (pp. 26-27) of Focus on Basics, also availableon the NCSALL web site.

Boston neighborhood maps could bevery difficult. Since they were familiarwith the “T” map, I used it to introduceand practice new vocabulary and toreview prepositions, which seemed tobe difficult for them. I introduced theother two maps once they were morecomfortable with giving and gettingdirections.

In that example, the studentsused actual “real-life” materials as abasis to learn to use more difficult

authentic materials. But sometimesstudents cannot immediately use thematerials in the ways that nativespeakers may use them. Widdowson(1990) discusses how “meanings areachieved by human agency, and arenegotiable; they are not containedin the text.” I need to present thematerials in a way that students cancreate the most meaning from them,and therefore I may need to scaffoldthem into a particular text or media.


Focus onBasicsFor example, when the class and I lookat bills together, we sometimes examinesmall pieces of the statement at atime. We do preliminary brainstormingon the parts and difficulties of bills.If students want to work together onfilling out job applications, for example,they might create work and educationtime lines as a first step before jumpingto the format of actual applications.We might do some games, activities,or exercises to reinforce new conceptsor vocabulary found in the materials.

Last year, students wantedto read newspapers, such as theBoston Globe, the Metro, andthe Boston Herald. Yet mystudents find even News for You,a newspaper written for adultlearners and published by NewReaders Press (see www.news-for-you.com), very challenging,and, for a few learners, over-whelming. Many students, forexample, have difficulty under-standing the difference between“article” and “advertisement,”and differentiating an article from anadvertisement in the newspaper. Manydo not know how to use the index orlist of contents. I scoured the popularpapers for articles that were short andaccessible to some, and also conductedactivities that familiarized students withthe formats of newspapers. In addition,I provided them with opportunities todiscuss and build their knowledge ofcurrent events, by watching the TVnews or reading newspapers from theirhome countries online and reportingon the articles in English in class orsmall groups. So although they didnot use the newspapers as full readingtexts, they increased their abilities tonavigate and understand the media, aswell as to discuss current news topics.

PracticingConversation“Authentically”

Using authentic materials can bea struggle when students want to focuson conversation. This past fall, students

chose the theme “conversations withthe doctor.” How can I replicateindividual doctor conversations? Ican’t bring their individual doctorsin, so I created situations to sim-ulate conversations, and had thempractice with each other. After theychose health topics they wanted to practice discussing, they used“authentic materials” to do someresearch. The medical pamphlets,encyclopedias, and health bookswere often too difficult, so a

volunteer tutor and I simplified afew passages, and provided videosand children’s health books on thetopics as well. Then they used taperecorders to tape spontaneous dia-logues on their topics. The studentstranscribed and edited their dialogue,then retaped them in a more re-hearsed way. We used these tapes as the texts for listening and compre-hension, as well as the transcripts forreading texts.

This undertaking was our project-based component. In between theseactivities, we had conversations aboutproblems people had with the doctor,and we compared American hospitalsand concepts of health and medicinewith those of the students’ nativecountries. The students read photo-stories (created by adult learners) andshort books (created for adult learners)on breast cancer and debated thequestion of prescribing medicine forchildren diagnosed as hyperactive.They also shared opinions and storieson these issues, and gave presentationson their stories.

Student-CreatedMaterials

My students often create things, such as the transcriptions of dialogues described above, as well as newsletters, tapes, or stories that,with permission, I can use in futureclasses. Sometimes, students takepictures at work, or bring in objectsfrom their home as sources forconversation or writing. I uselearner-created materials to provide

texts that are relevant andmeaningful to my students.The materials are usuallyaccessible to others in my class,and they create a base oflearning that is centered on the class’s own knowledge.Students appreciate reading the work of their peers, and Iwant to use the inherentpower of my position as ateacher to validate students’work as rich texts.

Integrating SpecificLanguage Skills

When students need to reviewspecific language skills, I inten-tionally integrate activities thatfocus on those skills. For example, I present the structures, and thenincorporate activities for students toself-edit, paying attention to theseparticular structures in their owntexts. I lead a few drills and games to practice an isolated pattern, and I try to draw on the students’ nativelanguage knowledge to help themunderstand or analyze a particularlanguage structure. To the extentpossible, I use students’ own work aswell as the thematic topic as the pointof departure for work with grammar.

Old FavoritesRegardless of what themes or

language topics learners choose, Ialways assign dialogue journals, whichinvolve correspondence betweenindividual students and me. The

“Using authentic materials can be a

struggle when studentswant to focus onconversation.”


Focus onBasicsjournals help students to developtheir abilities and provide moreindividualized opportunities for skilldevelopment than activities that aremore collectively created. They are bynature on-going and run concurrentlyto the shorter-term thematic units. Idon’t mark the journals, but providestudents with feedback via the questionsI pose. I also model correct spelling orstructures within my response letter.The students also keep free-writingjournals, in which, twice a month, theywrite without any restrictions on topic,without any editing or correction ofgrammar. Both journals give studentsan opportunity to reflect and exploreabout personal topics that mightinterest or concern them. For example,sometimes students write about whytheir work day was difficult, or thatit’s their child’s birthday. Their entriesprovide me with insight intowhat shapes or affects themas learners.

I also have studentsengage in reading circles orspecialized circles throughoutthe year. In the former, stu-dents choose from a list ofsome longer books to read(often texts created byand/or for adult learners),and separate into groupsbased on their choices.The books can take up to 10 weeks for the studentsto finish. These groups meetonce a week during class toread and discuss the bookstogether, with pre-readingor post-reading activitiesspecific for their book. Whenstudents finish these readingcircles, I introduce specializedcircles, for which studentschoose an area of focus:speaking and listening, reading, orwriting. These groups then meet oncea week and focus on activities fortheir specific needs, often ending witha small project or presentation to sharewith the class. Individual spelling orvocabulary cards provide studentswith reinforcement for spelling or

word issues — not theme-based —that have been difficult for them.Some students have fewer cards, andsome students do not need the sameamount of review. All these activitiesprovide more individualized oppor-tunities for students to focus onvocabulary or topics that are difficultor interesting for them.

In ConclusionOne of my highest priorities in

building curriculum is that the materialis drawn from learners’ lives, and thatthe students are continually part ofshaping the curriculum. As a result, I have an emergent, theme-basedcurriculum, where I integrate student-created and authentic materials on aregular basis. I use authentic — real-life — materials in multiple ways, and

I also integrate other sources such as stories created for adult learners,student-created texts, poetry, as well as some workbook, but more oftenteacher-created, activities. SometimesI forget to go to the students forfurther ideas, and sometimes I get toofocused on a student’s ability to do

isolated skills. Yet the structures I haveset in place for building curriculumkeep bringing me back to students forideas and focus.

Collaborating with students tocreate a theme-based curriculum isalways dynamic. Each class has slightlydifferent needs and goals. New facetsof a familiar topic emerge as indivi-duals bring their own experiences tothe discussions that shape our agenda.Each year brings new topics andinterests as well. When I approach anew or repeated topic, the collectiveprocess makes each unit unique.

ReferencesAuerbach, E. (1992). Making Meaning

Making Change. Washington, DC &McHenry, IL: Center for AppliedLinguistics & Delta Systems.

Cornbleth, C. (1990). Curriculum in Context.Briston, PA: The Falmer Press.

Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of theOppressed. (M. B. Ramos, Trans.)New York: Herder and Herder(Original work published 1968,copyrighted 1970).

Krashen, S., & Terrell, T. (1995).The Natural Approach: LanguageAcquisition in the Classroom. NewYork: Prentice Hall.

Nunan, D. (1988). The Learner-Centered Curriculum. New York:Cambridge University Press.

Purcell-Gates, V., Degener, S.,Jacobson, E., & Soler, M. (2001).“Taking literacy skills home.”Focus on Basics, 4D. 19-22.

Widdowson, H. (1990). Aspectsof Language Teaching. Oxford,UK: Oxford University Press.

About the AuthorCharissa Ahlstrom has taught inand coordinated community-

based ESOL programs in New York Cityand Boston for more than 10 years. Shejust completed the Applied Linguisticsgraduate program at the University ofMassachusetts, Boston. She is also deeplygrateful for the support and integrity ofher colleagues at the Adult LearningProgram in Jamaica Plain, where she hasworked for six years.❖


Focus onBasics

Most simply put, acurriculum is a guidefor learning. Many

adult basic education teachersand literacy tutors pick upexisting texts or curriculumpackets and start teaching, with-out knowing why they’re usingthe curriculum or what philo-sophy of education it reflects.But “curriculum always repre-sents somebody’s version of whatconstitutes knowledge and alegitimate worldview” (Sleeter& Grant, 1991, p. 80). Every-one who chooses or createscurriculum needs to develop apersonal philosophy of teachingand learning, examine thevalues and beliefs behind thatphilosophy, and design or selecta curriculum that reflectsthose beliefs and values. Indoing so, they must also rec-ognize that they exercise a lotof power: their choices willconvey to students a particularworld view.

This article is designed to provideadult basic education (ABE) practi-tioners with an introduction to threeapproaches to curriculum develop-ment, as a starting point for greaterawareness about curriculum choices.The first approach, “traditional,” is borrowed from the K-12 schoolsetting. The second, “learner-driven,”incorporates theories specific to adultliteracy education as well as recentresearch about teaching and learning.The third approach, “critical,” seeseducation as a distinctly political act,

and curriculum development as func-tioning in personally or politicallyempowering ways. These threeapproaches to curriculum develop-ment emphasize different beliefs abouteducation, but in practice the linesbetween them are blurring more andmore. None of them represents a fixedideology or body ofthought. Each func-tions more as anorganizing tool. Someof the research andtheory used to explainone approach mayappear in more thanone category dependingon the purposes andcontexts in which theyare being used. In thesame way, teachers andtutors may find that, inthe classroom, they drawfrom all three approaches when theycreate curriculum. The important pointis that teachers be conscious of whythey are choosing to use each approach.

The TraditionalApproach

The traditional model was laidout by Ralph Tyler in 1949 in hisseminal book, Basic Principles ofCurriculum and Instruction, and isgenerally considered the mainstreamway to conceptualize curriculum de-velopment. Many educators and adultliteracy students find it familiar becauseof its wide use in public schools in theUnited States. The approach has a“subject-centered” orientation: studentsgain mastery of subject matter predeter-mined by a set of “experts.” Curriculumis organized around content units andthe sequence of what is taught follows

the logic of the subject matter(Knowles, 1984). The organizing prin-ciples, laid out in the introduction toTyler’s book, identify the school as theholder of power in decision makingabout what gets taught:1. “What educational purposes should

the school seek to attain?2. How can learning experiences be

selected which are likely to beuseful in attaining these objectives?

3. How can learning experiences be or-ganized for effective instruction? and

4. How can the effectiveness oflearning experiences be evaluated?”(1949, p. v-vi).

In Tyler’s view, curriculum is a

cumulative process: over the course ofthe schooling years, educational exper-iences accumulate to exert profoundchanges in the learner, “in the wayswater dripping upon a stone wears itaway.” (1949, p. 83). Knowledge andskills are not duplicated, but instead,are taught sequentially over time. Onespiral approach, in which learners re-turn to topics, in more complexity overtime, can also be considered a tradi-tional approach. Skills-based or com-petency-based instruction, commonin adult basic education, often drawsupon a traditionalist approach tocurriculum, with students mastering a given set of skills or procedures in a logical instructional sequence.

Advantages One of the advantages of the

traditional approach is that studentslike it: they’re used to it and it fits

Values and Beliefs:The WorldView Behind Curriculum by Amy Prevedel

“One of the advantagesof the traditional

approach is that studentslike it: they’re used to itand it fits their idea of

what school should be.”

Focus onBasics


their idea of what school should be.Learning discrete skills in a step-by-step fashion lends itself to traditionaltesting. Test scores can be easilyquantified and explained to funders asprogram outputs. Program administratorscan use the results of traditional teststo justify their programs’ achieve-ments. Students, tutors and teacherscan point to quantifiable progress,and that is certainly motivating.

Traditional curriculum also lendsitself well to mass production: pub-lishers can produce workbooks thatbreak down reading or math intosubskills and processes, which studentsand teachers can easily navigate. Thetraditional approach is efficient in afield in which resources for staff develop-ment are scant. While teachers cancreate their own materials using atraditionalist approach, they can alsodraw upon commercially or locally

developed materials and methods.Volunteer tutors and adult basiceducation teachers without muchtraining or time can easily teach froman existing curriculum.

The traditional approach is alsoaccessible. Commercially producedtraditional curricula and materials, viaworkbook or computer, are widely avail-able to learners who are interested instudying on their own. They don’t haveto wait for a class to start or fit it intotheir schedules. Since National Centerfor the Study of Adult Learning andLiteracy (NCSALL) research (Reder &Strawn, 2001) finds more people withlow literacy skills engaged in self studythan we might have assumed, the avail-ability of these materials is important.

DisadvantagesIn the traditional approach to

curriculum, someone other than the

student controls what is taught andwhen: the state, which has mandateda curriculum framework; the program,the teacher, or the book publisher.This perpetuates a power dynamic inwhich the teacher has a more valuedform of knowledge, and more control,than the student. The student’s role ispassive, and serves as an example of“banking education,” in which theexpert teachers deposit knowledgeinto the student who lacks knowledge(Freire, 1970). Whether conscious ornot, this approach supports the viewthat low literacy skills are the burdenand/or the responsibility of theindividual as opposed to the result of a complex interaction involvingculture, race, class, language, gender,families, communities, economies andinstitutions of learning.

In its most extreme, the traditionalmodel omits the importance of learner

Who determinescurriculum?

What doesknowledge looklike?

What are theunderlyingassumptions?

What might thislook like inaction?

How is learningassessed?

Three Approaches to CurriculumIssue Traditional Approach Learner-Driven Approach Critical Approach

• Curriculum developer(publisher, state, institution)sets goals and chooseslearning experiences,evaluates, plans andproposes curriculum

• Appears neutral andequitable in its availability

• Exists “out there,” can beorganized and transmitted

• Is observable andmeasurable

• Pre-determined goals • Learning happens in a

linear, step-by-step fashion• Expert knowledge is important

• A classroom with lessonplans, homework, gradespossibly

• Skills-based/sequenced text-books or workbook with pre-determined learning goals

• Objective, observable“scientific” means

• Can provide comparativescores

• Students articulate learning goalsthat spring from their real-worldroles

• Students help plan curriculum

• Created through the interaction of student and text

• Builds on what learners alreadyknow

• Relevant to students’ real-lifecontext

• Learning happens in social contexts• Instruction is transparent and based

on purposes students determine• Learners actively build on

knowledge and experience

• Apolitical on the surface• Drawn from adults’ lives in their

everyday contexts

• Performance of the student’scontextualized goal

• Continuing, involving metacog-nitive strategies

• Teacher leads the class while followingthe lead of learners

• Students, rather than “outsiders,”become experts

• Not fixed — dependent upon inter-action among students, text, and teacher

• Autobiographic – depends on thepolitics of identity brought to learning

• Complex interaction between text, theteacher, and what is taught

• Knowledge is created, rather than taken in

• Education is political • Language and power are connected

• Abandons technician mentality• Addresses social and community

issues of importance• Curriculum not set in advance;

emerges from “action and interaction ofthe participants” (Doll, 1993)

• Portfolios, self-assessment instruments• Measures of social and personal change• Levels of critical consciousness reached • External performance levels do not apply


Focus onBasicsexperience, requiring a learner toaccept, rather than challenge, theinformation being transmitted. Inaddition to insinuating to the adultlearner that he is not capable ofdetermining what it is he needs tolearn, the cumulative element of thetraditional approach can workagainst an adult’s needs. Adultsoften have immediate needs andmotivations for learning andmay not have time to accumu-late years of knowledge andskills to apply in the future.Discrete skills can be taughtunder the assumption that theywill automatically transfer toany variety of situations outsidethe classroom.

The Learner-Driven Approach

In his theory of adultlearning, Malcolm Knowles, oftenconsidered the father of adulteducation, says that adults come toeducation “with a life-centered, task-centered, or problem-centeredorientation to learning. For the mostpart, adults do not learn for the sakeof learning” (1984, p. 12). This viewacknowledges the possible motives forlearning that students bring to literacyeducation. A NCSALL study hasshown that making progress towardself-determined learning goals is amajor factor in adult learner per-sistence in ABE programs (Comings,Parrella, & Soricone, 2000). Thesetwo perspectives show adult learnersas a dynamic force in ABE orientationto curriculum.

The term learner-driven is tricky.It suggests that the adult learner —not the subject matter — plays a cen-tral role in determining curriculum.Almost everyone I’ve spoken to whoworks in literacy says they work in a learner-centered program, wherepresumably everyone uses a learner-centered curriculum. However, some-one’s definition of learner-centered maymean that students get to pick out askills workbook or decide where to sit

in the library. I prefer the pithy andchallenging definition coined byFingeret (2000, p. 14): students areinvolved in “developing instructionalmaterials that respond to students’interests and respect their culture andprior learning.” This definition sees

students taking an active role in de-veloping curriculum; the curriculum is based on their reasons for learningas well as what they bring with theminto a learning situation. A morerecent term, “learner-driven,” betterdescribes the dynamic nature studentsbring to curriculum and instruction,which is why I chose it for this article.

Learner-driven approaches drawupon constructivism, a theory oflearning in which “people learn whenthey relate new information and skillsto what they already know, activelypractice the new information andskills in a supportive environment, andget feedback on their performance.Learners construct their own under-standing from what they are exposedto in the classroom and what theyhave experienced in the rest of theirlives” (Cromley, 2000, p. 10). LevVgotsky’s socio-cultural theory of cognition posits that mentalfunctioning has its origins in social life;the very act of processing informationgoes beyond the direct functioning of the brain’s structure (Wertsch &Kanner, 1992). Historical, social, andcultural influences play major roles inshaping the way individuals think and

learn, and a learner-driven curriculumacknowledges these influences. Thelearner-driven approach also draws uponthe work of contextual theorists, whobelieve that effective learning is situatedwithin the social context of realsurroundings and situations. Learning

skills means applying skills, whichinvolves practice with the realactivities and materials thatcome out of real-life situations(Bransford et al., 2000).

To develop learner-drivencurriculum, teachers need toview learners as active inquirerswho use previous experiences —both mental and social — tomake meaning of the world.Curriculum springs from students’purposes for learning and usesreal-life materials and contexts.To identify and address students’goals and purposes for learning,teachers ask adults what they

want to learn more about or be able todo better. Literacy education becomesless about attaining a discrete set ofskills and more about gaining expertisein the literacy activities of everydaylife. Students learn basic, mechanical,reading and writing skills in the pro-cess. As researcher Marilyn Gillespiewrites about this approach in dis-cussing the Equipped for the Futureinitiative from the National Institutefor Literacy, “Teachers begin withtasks learners need immediately intheir daily lives and then ‘back into’the knowledge, skills and strategiesrequired to perform those tasks. Thisdoes not mean that basic skills are notcovered, but they are addressed in an iterative rather than a sequentialmanner” (2002, p. 4).

AdvantagesA learner-driven approach to

curriculum by definition gives powerto the learners: they are identified asthe experts in knowing what theyneed to know. Students see their needsclearly reflected in the classroom,which is very motivating. The learner-driven approach creates a direct linkbetween in-class work and learners’

“A learner-drivenapproach to curriculum

by definition gives powerto the learners: they are

identified as the experts inknowing what they need

to know.”

Focus onBasics


need for literacy outside the classroom.As a result, learners can more easilytransfer new skills to day-to-day use(Purcell-Gates, et al., 2001). Theimmediacy of this transfer of skills athome, at work, and in communitiesalso encourages learner persistence.

The constructivist element ofthis approach honors the social andcultural context of the learner. Giventhat adult basic education learners arepredominantly from marginalized groupsin American society (D’Amico, inpress), respecting learners’ perspec-tives is a bold political act. Learner-driven curriculum development pro-vides a rich picture of adult learningand moves beyond the image of ABEmerely as “school for big people.”

DisadvantagesA learner-driven approach often

relies on the teacher’s ability to createor select materials appropriate tolearners’ expressed needs. This requiresskill on the part of the teacher, as well as time and resources: at a minimum, texts broughtin from real life, a wide poolof commercially availablematerials from which to draw,and a reliable photocopier.Given the reality of teachers’professional preparation andworking conditions (Smith, etal., 2001), lack of skill, timeand resources makes creatingcurriculum with this approachdifficult.

Teachers may also find itdifficult to strike an acceptablebalance among the competingneeds and interests of students.Students are often initially un-comfortable with the seeminglyambiguous nature of a curricu-lum that is molded jointly byteacher and learners. Teachers, too,are often uncomfortable with askingstudents to share issues in their lives,they struggle with the balance betweenskills instruction and content necessaryin this approach. In addition, whilethis approach recognizes the indivi-dual backgrounds of students, it does

not explicitly address political andpower issues that cause and perpetuatemarginalization and low literacy skills.

Finally, adult basic educationprograms, pushed to produce concreteoutputs such as test scores, may feelthat the creation of learner-drivencurriculum is a luxury that they cannot afford.

The CriticalApproach

Those who embrace the criticalapproach consider education a politi-cal act, one that should function inemancipatory ways (Pinar, 1978).The pioneer of this approach wasPaolo Freire (1985), a Brazilian adultliteracy educator who worked withlaborers, peasants, and fishermen andwas greatly influenced by his experi-ences with these economicallymarginalized social classes. Hebelieved that “illiteracy is one of theconcrete expressions of an unjust

social reality” (1985, p. 10). Insteadof the traditional “banking” model ofadult education in which the teacherdeposits politically neutral, technicalknowledge into students, criticalpedagogy assumes that education is avalue-laden process. Learners activelycreate knowledge as they participate

in learning by taking a “critical look”at who has power and what impactthat power has on the lives of thosewithout it, recognizing the causal andcircumstantial relationships that causesocial injustice. Gaining power withwords translates into gaining personalpower and making change in the world.

Freire’s theories, and the curriculathat spring from them, promote criticalthinking, dialogue, and decision-making activities that support demo-cratic ideals and move toward sociallycritical consciousness. In developingcritical curriculum, teachers must firstlearn about important issues in theirstudents’ lives through conversations,journaling, discussions, and lots oflistening. This research enablesteachers to identify issues that relateto the experiences and concerns stu-dents identify. Reading and writingskills develop in tandem with criticalthinking skills, and ultimately, literacylearning becomes a means of trans-forming students’ lives and commu-

nities. Often, a unit of curriculumends with meaningful actionthat addresses a community need.

Within Freire’s activitiesand overarching goals, however,other theorists have locatedareas to further develop. Forexample, feminists point outthat critical theory does notexplicitly include gender issues,even though women oftenexperience low literacy skills, or marginalization, in differentways and in different situationsthan men do. While Freire’sideas take aim at disparities insocial class, theorists writingafter Freire have expressed a“sharpened interest in powerand language, with an emphasison a multiplicity of perspectives

that include race, class, gender, andculture.” (Hemphill, 1999, p. 2).Curriculum design — and adulteducation in general — needs tomove beyond the concept of auniversal adult learner and have theflexibility to include adults’ diverseidentities and experiences.

“The critical approach to curriculum is, by

definition, political, puttingpower issues front and

center. It doesn’t ignore thedifficulties that learners

face in life but provides away for learners togetherto meet them head on.”


Focus onBasicsIn this third approach, students are

central to the process of constructingand interpreting knowledge. Criticalcurriculum activities include journals,portfolios, and other autobiographical,literary and artistic methodologies(Slattery, 1995) that focus less onexternal objectives than on internalexperiences. William Doll, a theoristwho views curriculum as a means ofgaining personal emancipation (1993),sees opportunity for two powerfulactions in critical curriculum: self-organization and transformation. Hewrites, “Plans arise from action andare modified through actions...., thistranslates into course syllabi or lessonplans written in a general, loose, some-what indeterminate manner. As thecourse or lesson proceeds, specificitybecomes more appropriate and isworked out conjointly—amongteacher, students, text” (1993, p. 171).The negotiation that takes placeengages both students and teachers indecision-making; students see them-selves as equal partners in solvingproblems in the classroom and beyond.

AdvantagesThe critical approach to curricu-

lum is, by definition, political, puttingpower issues front and center. It doesnot ignore the difficulties that learnersface in life but provides a way forlearners together to meet them head

on. By doing so, it does not create aseparation between learners’ lives andwhat they are learning, which, as inthe learner-driven approach, is motiva-ting. In addition, the call to action in-herent in this approach helps learnersbridge the “classroom/real world”divide. This method is rooted in thesocial justice movement. Teacherswho believe in adult literacy as anelement of social justice embrace thepremises underlying this method.

DisadvantagesThe critical approach to curricu-

lum has many of same disadvantagesof the learner-driven approach. Ittakes time. Teachers need a particularset of facilitation skills in addition tothe skills needed to teach reading andwriting, or English for speakers ofother languages. Learners are notusually familiar with this approach,and may be uneasy with it. They mayinitially have trouble understandinghow a class taught using this approachwill help them, for example, pass thetests of General Educational Develop-ment (GED).

Since taking action is a crucialelement of the curriculum, teachersneed to recognize the potential thatlearners’ actions may cause backlashfrom powers that are being questionedor threatened. The teacher andprogram need to be committed to

supporting learners, rather thanabandoning them if, for example, alandlord decides to evict studentsrather than rectify housing problems.

ConclusionMany teachers are not free to

choose their curriculum: the state,funder, or program has made thatchoice, or time and resources presentso many restrictions that the choice is virtually made for them. In recog-nizing that curriculum design alwaysreflects someone’s values and beliefs,those who have the luxury of makingdecisions about curricula have theresponsibility to ensure that theirchoices reflect their views about thegoals and purposes of education. Thatsaid, it is true that the lines betweenthe approaches have blurred consid-erably. Many textbook series weredeveloped with extensive input fromlearners. Some pose critical questionsabout issues of power; others includeactivities that help learners bridge the classroom/real life divide. Manyteachers find ways to use traditionaltexts in learner-driven classrooms; andlearner-driven curriculum can be ameans of explicitly taking action forsocial change. My guess is that, likemost teachers, you will draw from thebest of each approach, creating yourown, eclectic curriculum.

ReferencesBransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R.,

(eds.) (2000). How People Learn:Bridging Research and Practice. TheNational Academy Press. (http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309065364/html)

Comings, J., Parella, A., & Soricone, L.(2000, March). “Helping adults persist:Four supports.” Focus on Basics, 4A, 1-6.

Cromley, J. (2000). “Learning withcomputers: The theory behind the prac-tice.” Focus on Basics, 4C, 6-11.

D’Amico, D. (in press). “Race, Class,Gender, and Sexual Orientation inABE.” In J. Comings, B. Garner, & C.Smith, (eds.) Review of Adult Learningand Literacy. Hillsdale, NJ: Laurence J.Erlbaum.

One Topic, Three Approaches to CurriculumA class that uses a traditional approach to curriculum might cover

the topic “housing” in a series of lessons nested within a workbook thatfocuses on “life skills.” In a learner-driven class, a student might indicateinterest in better understanding a rental agreement. The teacher mightfirst find out what the students already know about contracts and rentalagreements. Then the teacher might use the rental agreement to helplearners build reading skills and develop reading strategies. In a classthat uses a critical approach to curriculum, if students indicate thathousing is an issue, a teacher might display pictures of types of housing,and lead a discussion about the kinds of housing with which studentsare familiar, the differences in housing, the underlying policies andpower structures that lead to substandard housing. Reading and writingactivities might center around writing letters to protest current housingpolicies, or discrimination in certain housing markets.

Focus onBasics


Doll, W. (1993). “Constructing acurriculum matrix.” A Post-ModernPerspective on Curriculum. New York:Teachers College Press.

Doll, W., & Alcazar, A., (1998).“Curriculum and concepts of control.” In W. Pinar (ed.) Curriculum: TowardNew Identities. New York: GarlandPublishing, Inc.

Fingeret, H. (1992, 2000). AdultLiteracy: Politics, Policy and Practice. ABackground Paper Prepared for ThePew Charitable Trusts. Literacy South.

Friere, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed.New York: Herder and Herder.

Freire, P. (1985). The Politics of Education:Culture, Power, and Liberation. CriticalStudies in Education Series (eds. Freire,P. and Giroux H.). New York: Berginand Garvey.

Gillespie, M. (2002). “EFF researchprinciple: A contextualized approach to curriculum and instruction,” EFF Research to Practice Note 3,Washington, D.C.: National Institutefor Literacy.

Hemphill, D. (1999). “Incorporatingpostmodernist perspectives into adulteducation.” In V. Sheared & P. Sissel(eds.), Making Space: Reframing Theoryand Practice in Adult Education, A

Grassroots Approach. New York:Greenwood Publishing Group.

Knowles, M. (1984). “Introduction: Theart and science of helping adults learn.”In M. Knowles and associates (eds.).Andragogy in Action: Applying ModernPrinciples of Adult Learning. SanFrancisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Parkay, F. W. & Hass, G. (2000). Curricu-lum Planning: A Contemporary Approach.Needham Heights, MA: Allyn andBacon-Longwood

Pinar., W., (1978). “The reconceptualiza-tion of curriculum studies.” Journal ofCurriculum Studies 10, no.3, pp.205-14.

Pinar, W. (ed.) (1998). Curriculum:Toward New Identities. New York andLondon: Garland Publishing, Inc.

Purcell-Gates, V., Degener, S., Jacobson,E., & Soler, M (2001). “Taking literacyskills home.” Focus on Basics, 4D, 19-22.

Reder, S. & Strawn, C. (2001). “Programparticipation and self-directed learningto improve basic skills.” Focus on Basics,4D, 15-18.

Slattery, P. (1995). “The reconceptual-ization of curriculum and instruction.”Curriculum Development in the Post-modern Era. New York: GarlandReference Library of Social Science.

Sleeter, C.E., Grant, C.A., (1991). “Race,class, gender, and disability in currenttextbooks.” In M. Apple & L. ChristianSmith (eds.), The Politics of the Textbook.New York: Routledge Publications.

Smith, C., Gillespie, M., & Hofer, J.(2001). “The working conditions ofadulat literacy teachers.” Focus on Basics4D, 1-7.

Tyler, R. (1949). “How Can LearningExperiences be Organized for EffectiveInstruction?” Basic Principles ofCurriculum and Instruction. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.

Wertsch, J. and Kanner, B. (1992). “Asociocultural approach to intellectualdevelopment.” In Sternberg & Bert(eds.), Intellectual Development. NewYork: Cambridge University Press.

About the AuthorAmy Prevedel coordinates Berkeley Reads,the adult literacy program of the BerkeleyPublic Library. She has worked in volun-teer-based adult literacy settings for thepast 10 years and holds a master’s degreein Adult Education from San FranciscoState University. She is working towardcertification as a national trainer for theEquipped for the Future initiative. ❖

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Focus onBasics

Heide Spruck Wrigleywas the contentspecialist on “What

Works for Adult ESL LiteracyStudents,” a study funded bythe US Department of Educa-tion and carried out jointly bythe American Institutes forResearch and Aguirre Inter-national. The two principalresearchers on the study wereLarry Condelli (AIR) andHeide Wrigley (Aguirre Inter-national). Heide discussed thestudy, its findings, and theirimplications for curriculumwith Focus on Basics.

FOB: Can you briefly describe

the study for us?

HEIDE: The study was designedto take a look at what helps literacystudents who are new to Englishdevelop their English reading skills aswell as their oral interaction skills inEnglish. These are students who havefewer than six years of schooling intheir home countries and who, bydefinition, don’t have strong literacyskills in their home language nor dothey generally have strong skills inEnglish. But we do know that literacystudents have strong skills that a curriculum can build on. Theynegotiate their daily lives in anenvironment that is both English-

What Works for Adult ESL Students

speaking and print-rich; they oftenhave developed a score of sight wordsthey rely on; and they use compen-sation strategies by drawing on theirbackground knowledge and lifeexperience to help them make senseof things. They all speak at least onelanguage fluently and are now inESOL [English for speakers of otherlanguages] classes in an effort to pickup English and learn the basic skillsthey missed by not having been ableto complete theirschooling in theirhome countries.

The study isparticularly per-tinent now thatimmigration frompoorer countries isincreasing and in-cludes many moreindividuals who hadto leave school earlybecause they had towork or their countrywas in the midst ofcivil strife. The lar-gest group of thesenew immigrantscomes from Mexico,where educational opportunities arelimited for much of the population(two-thirds of immigrants fromMexico haven’t completed highschool), but refugees from SoutheastAsia (primarily Hmong) and fromAfrica (Somalia, Sudan, and anumber of West African countries)

are also among the literacy students.These groups have not been wellserved in conventional ESOL classeswhere the class starts with a book andthe curriculum assumes that studentshave a certain level of literacy. Thesestudents — with limited literacy —have trouble in these ESOL classes,since students with higher levels of education drive the speed of theclass and basic literacy is seldomtaught. That was the concernbehind the study.

It’s an observational study,involving about 500 students whospoke more than 20 languages, withthe majority being Spanish speakers.It was grounded in a frameworkthat looked at literacy and languageacquisition as a multidimensionalconstruct. ESOL literacy involveslearning how to deal with differentkinds of text, and learning how towrite for different reasons (for self-expression and functional literacy, forexample). ESOL literacy also requireslearning English, understanding it andproducing it; learning grammar,

vocabulary, pronunciation, and theother subskills. We developed aframework that identified the compo-nents of ESOL literacy, starting withprint awareness, so that we couldobserve the classes to see to whatextent are teachers are working withthese different forms of literacy:

“One of the key findings for reading development wasthat students learned more, as

measured in movement onstandardized tests, in classeswhere the teacher made the

connection between life outsidethe classroom and what waslearned in the classroom than

in other classes.”

Focus onBasics


narrative, document prose, etc. Welooked at literacy development,second language development, andways of connecting oral and writtenlanguage.

We also looked at learningopportunities: to what extent didpeople get to interact with each otherand to what extent did students get achance to talk about their own lives,be involved in spon-taneous conversations,or deal with problemsolving? We wanted to see to what extentteachers used authenticmaterials or materialsthat reflect the literacydemands of the worldoutside, beyond theclassroom. We notedthe language (Englishor the native language)used by the teacherduring the ESOLliteracy classes. Thestudy used a multi-variable statisticalmodel of analysis,looking at intraclass variation,holding various factors constant to see what kind of teaching made a dif-ference. The model allowed us to lookat complex relationships among lit-eracy, teaching, and learning. That iswhat learning literacy while you aretrying to learn a second language is: acomplex relationship.

FOB: What were the study’s

key findings?

HEIDE: One of the key findingsfor reading development was thatstudents learned more, as measuredin movement on standardized tests, in classes where the teacher made theconnection between life outside theclassroom and what was learned inthe classroom than in classes that didnot. So, for example, if teachers ledfield trips where students had to useEnglish; or brought in grocery fliers orcatalogues to read and discuss; or usedas literacy materials cereal boxes orsoup cans to figure out calories, all of

which are materials and informationthat reflected the literacy that stu-dents deal with in their everydaylives, the impact was stronger. Wecalled this “bringing in the outside.”Bringing in the outside made a sig-nificant difference in reading gains on standardized tests.

In one class, for example, theteacher helped a group of displaced

workers learn how to order food inEnglish at a local fast food restaurant.This seems like a small task but washugely important to the group sincetheir children always had to order forthem. Ordering themselves helpedrestore the parental role to what thestudents considered a more naturalbalance. The group spent a great dealof time discussing the menu, predictingquestions, and practicing what to say:“Would you like that supersized?”“No, thank you.” They then went tothe fast food restaurant and, for thefirst time, ordered their food bythemselves.

We also did a literacy practicesinventory to see what kind of thingspeople were reading and writing intheir native languages and English.We didn’t see a really close relation-ship between what they were readingand how much they were reading andgains on standardized tests; there arejust too many variables involved. Ofcourse, people who had higher scores

to start with tended to read morebecause it was easier for them.

FOB: Did you happen to look

at whether, if a teacher “brought

in the outside” to class, students

increased their use of literacy skills

outside of class? That’s something

that Victoria Purcell-Gates studied

in her research (see the box on

page 5 for a descrip-

tion of her findings).

HEIDE: I can’tsay that there was norelationship betweenteaching approach anduse of literacy, becausewe didn’t analyze forthat. We were lookingprimarily at the relation-ship between the kindof ESOL and literacyemphasized in the class-room and the way itwas taught, and learneroutcomes (as measuredby standardized tests).There were otherfindings as well, related

to growth in oral proficiency, for ex-ample, and we had some interestingfindings in terms of attendance.

FOB: Were there any findings

you did not expect?

HEIDE: Yes. Judicious use of thenative language made a difference inboth reading and oral language skillacquisition as shown by results onstandardized tests. We didn’t have anynative language literacy classes, andwe didn’t have any classes in whichteachers did a great deal of translatingfor the students. But students hadhigher gains when the students inthe class shared a language — (in ourcase, Spanish) — and the teacher wasbilingual and used Spanish here andthere, to give instructions, or to clarify,or to offer a quick translation of adifficult term. In classes with otherlanguage groups, the group eitherspoke multiple languages, as was thecase in Seattle and New York, or theteacher was not bilingual, as was the


Focus onBasicscase with Somali and Hmong classes.

The classes where the teacherused the native language here andthere had higher gains. This makessense, particularly for literacy studentswho had little English, because theirbrains are busy trying to speak, tofigure out print, to understand whatthe teacher wants, all while dealingwith a new language and a newculture. Many of the students had notbeen in a classroom since they weresmall children, so school tasks werenew to them as well. In these cases,where you are cognitively taxed toyour fullest extent, if someone comesin and explains it to you, it reallyfrees up mental space to focus on thetask itself. In ESOL classes that areall in English, so much of students’time and energy is spent trying tofigure out what it is the teacher wantsthem to do. Once the instructions areclear, the task becomes manageable.

Something else new, althoughnot totally unexpected, was that stu-dents need practice and they needvariety. I think in our emphasis oncommunicative competence wesometimes forget how much practiceis needed before literacy andEnglish take hold and becomeinternalized or “automatized.”On the other hand, if languageinput and language tasks be-come repetitive and boring,the brain shuts down andlearning slows way down.Students who experiencedmainly skill and drill in theirclasses didn’t do as well asother groups who had morevaried experiences. By thesame token, if everything wasnew all the time, and lots ofdifferent activities came at thestudents without a clear focuson what they needed to learn, theydidn’t do as well either.

The students who got bothsufficient time on task with a par-ticular component and a chance toencounter that component in variousways (reading, writing, hands-onactivities, talking about they were

reading) showed higher gains thanthe rest. Students need a chance tointeract with print, to practice, and to“get it down.” At the same time, theybenefit from different kinds of exper-iences that reinforce language andliteracy skills. This kind of balancebetween routine and variety made adifference in their scores on stan-dardized testing.

FOB: The two findings seem

like they may be related: judicious

use of native language, to intro-

duce procedures and to clarify

complex points, for example, and

the need for routine. Both indicate

that time should be spent on the

content — on the learning —

rather than on the procedures.

HEIDE: I think a certain amountof routine is good, particularly foradults who have little experiencewith schooling and who often doubttheir own ability to learn. School-based learning is important to themand they want to get the basic skillsthat they have missed. But theyoften really come alive when they geta chance to work with important

concepts, such as figuring out what allthe charges on a phone bill are for orwhether buying vegetables at a farmer’smarket or in a supermarket is a betterdeal. The finding also points to theimportance of giving instructions thatare simple and clear, and of demon-strating and modeling so that

frustration and anxiety are reducedand students can focus on “meaning-making.” And that can be done in English as well as in the nativelanguage.

FOB: Any other findings to

share?

HEIDE: The basic attendancefinding was that it didn’t matter howmany hours for class that studentscame but the percentage of class timethey came. Rate of attendance mattersmore than the hours per se. For example,a student who comes to class almostevery day and then drops out afterthree and a half months ends updoing better than a student who onlyattends sporadically but stays for thefull six months of the course. This istrue even when the total number ofclass hours attended are the same.

FOB: What are the implica-

tions of the findings of your study

for curriculum?

HEIDE: We found that buildingon what students are interested in out-side of the classroom results in success.This supports the idea that you want

to have a curriculum that con-nects literacy development withoral language development andconnects it back to students’lives. You can’t read in Englishif you don’t know English. Wedidn’t see that a narrow ap-proach that focused solely onnarrow notions of reading wassuccessful, although spendingtime on some of the subskillsrelated to fluency and decodingcertainly is necessary for studentswho don’t have these skills. Aswe keep hearing, these subskillsare necessary but not sufficientand I think our study shows that.

The findings speak for building a rich curriculum that makes a con-nection between the language andliteracy used inside and outside of theclassroom and lets these students seethat they are gaining skills that reflectwhat’s needed in daily life. Use ofobjects (real foods, household items),

“Judicious use of the native language made

a difference in bothreading and oral language

skill acquisition as shown by results on standardized tests.”

Focus onBasics


environmental print (flyers, labels,signs), mail (including notes fromschools), and trips to neighborhoodspots where literacy is needed arenot the only materials that are useful.Language experience stories, personalwritings, and stories and songs buildengagement and can become thestarting point for discussions andfurther language use. These materialsalso form the basis for building fluency,discovering patterns, developingvocabulary, and practicing varioussubskills. Their use ties back in withthe finding about practice and variety.

“Varied interaction and practice”is important. We do need to drawstudents’ attention to what it is wewant them to learn. There needs tobe focus, engagement, and practice iflanguage and literacy learning is totake place. A lot of times in ESOLteaching we’re doing way too manythings that don’t connect to eachother. Tightening the connections,doing fewer things, focusing on whatstudents need to get in order to moveforward is important.

In terms of the native language,we do need to rethink that “Englishonly” idea, and that fear that anyminute spent in native language takesaway from English learning. That isactually not true. We need to reallythink about how to provide oppor-tunities for students to have enoughtime on task really to become fluentin English. This calls for multipleopportunities to use English whilefacilitating learning by using the nativelanguage here or there or, if that is notpossible, taking time out to demon-strate or model the tasks or use visualinformation to get our point across.

I mentioned before that languagelearners need enough energy in termsof cognitive resource to focus on lang-uage learning. If tasks are constantlychanging or if instructions contain newwords and phrases, learning is reallyinhibited. So I like to encourageteachers to keep a certain amount ofclassroom interaction routine whenthey are introducing new concepts.That lets people focus on the learning

rather than on the procedures. Butoverall, in terms of curriculum, thefindings suggest a rich language andliteracy learning curriculum that pro-vides opportunities for students to useEnglish outside of the classroom, boththrough interactions with Englishspeakers and through engagement withvarious forms of print. But the studyalso points toward the need to providea sufficient focus on structure andpractice. We can’t just assume thatliteracy students will pick up readingand writing skills on their own, throughmere exposure and continued acqui-sition of English. This may be true forstudents who have a sound foundationin literacy in the native language, butit’s not true for students who lack theseskills. Through our curriculum, we willneed to give ESOL literacy studentspractice in acquiring basic reading andwriting skills within the context oftheir lives without making these skillsthe primary focus of the curriculum.

FOB: Thanks for sharing all

this with us. Where can readers

go for your full report?

HEIDE: The report is still underreview by the Department of Edu-cation. It’s difficult to tell when it willbe released. As soon as the study isreleased, it will be available on theweb. We will announce its avail-ability in various newsletters and listserves, including the Focus on Basicselectronic discussion list (to subscribe,see the box on this page).

Focus on BasicsElectronic

Discussion ListFocus on Basics electronic dis-

cussion list is a forum for discussionabout the articles published in Focuson Basics. It is a place to conversewith colleagues about the themesexamined in the publication; to get questions answered and to posethem; to critique issues raised in thepublication; and to share relevantexperiences and resources.

To participate in the Focus onBasics discussion list (it’s free!), go tothe LINCS homepage at http://nifl.gov.Choose “Discussions.” Scroll down toand click on “Focus on Basics.” Thenclick on“Subscribe,” which is to the left, and follow the instructions. Or, send an e-mail message [email protected] the following request in the bodyof the message: SUBSCRIBE NIFL–FOBasics firstname lastname. Spellyour first and last names exactly as you would like them to appear. Forexample, Sue Smith would type:subscribe NIFL–FOBasics Sue Smith

There should be no other text in the message. Give it a couple ofminutes to respond. You should receivea return mail message welcoming youto NIFL–FOBasics.

The manager of this list isBarbara Garner, editor of Focuson Basics. She can be reached [email protected]. PleaseDO NOT send subscription requeststo this address.❖

Editorial BoardVolume 6C

September 2003Miriam Burt, Center for AppliedLinguistics, Washington, DC

Yvonne Lerew, LSS-SD Refugee andImmigration Programs, Sioux Falls, SD

Jessica Mortensen, World Education,Boston, MA

Andy Nash, World Education, Boston, MA

Norene Peterson, Billings AdultEducation Center, Billings, MT

Karen J. Seay, Adult LearningPrograms of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK

ResourcesWrigley, H. (1993). “One size does

not fit all: Educational perspectivesand program practices in the U.S.”TESOL Quarterly, 27, (3).

Wrigley, H. (2004). “We are the world:Serving language minority adults infamily literacy programs.” In B.HWasik (ed.) Handbook on FamilyLiteracy: Research and Services. Mawah,NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Spruck, H., & Guth, G. (1992). BringingLiteracy to Life: Issues and Options inAdult ESL Literacy. San Mateo, CA:Aguirre International.❖


Focus onBasics

Over the past 10 years,in programs involvingmore than a dozen

companies in El Paso, Texas,workplace literacy classes havefocused on rudimentary Englishlanguage skills that employersperceived that workers neededwhile working in their currentjobs. However, in homogeneousbilingual communities, indivi-duals in entry-level jobs oftendo not need much English todo a job well. We found thatemployees attended instructioneither because their employerasked them to attend and theyfelt obligated or because theyhoped to acquire English skillsthey could use at home withtheir children who werelearning English in school.When curricula and instruc-tion focused on workplacethemes (which workers hadsaid they did not feel theyneeded), students consistentlydropped out. It was not un-common to lose more than halfof the class enrollment beforethe end of the course. Howcould we change this?

In 2001, Johns HopkinsUniversity conducted observations,interviews, and surveys of instructors

working in retraining programs fordislocated workers in El Paso. Theseprograms serve mostly women whohave been dislocated from the gar-ment industry, and others who workbut need to increase their skills to advance within their places ofemployment. Typical students areMexican immigrants who attendedthree to eight years of schooling inMexico as children. They possesshigh-beginning to high-intermediate

levels of literacy in Spanish andbeginning to low-intermediate levelsof literacy in English. Dislocatedworkers receive federal retrainingdollars and attend school 20 to 30hours per week for periods up to 18months. Those involved in workplaceinstruction at their places of employ-ment attend instruction four to 12hours weekly. Instruction for bothgroups includes job-specific skilltraining, computer technologytraining, and related English skillsdevelopment.

We observed instructors usingSpanish for a variety of purposes:orally translating job-specific materialwritten above the eighth grade level;providing oral explanations whenstudents “appeared” confused; givingdirections and instructions; andencouraging students. We also ob-served some instructors expectingstudents to engage in activities thatrequired high-level, work-specificcritical and creative thinking tasksusing English only. When students

One Classroom, TwoLanguages: Adult BilingualCurriculum DevelopmentHow should ESOL programs use learners’ firstlanguage to build their acquisition of the second?by Kay Taggart and Sara Martinez

Native Language UseUsing the adult learners’ native language in the workforce-

training classroom is not a new concept in our community or aroundthe nation. Beginning in the latter half of the 1970s and continuingthrough the mid-1990s, the US Department of Education funded anumber of Bilingual Vocational Training (BVT) projects under theCarl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act. Some of these projectsdeveloped native-language instructional materials and used Spanish,Chinese, or another language to teach job-specific skills; relatedvocational English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) helpedstudents learn English related to the work area. Other programssimply used bilingual assistants to provide supportive one-on-onetutorials as needed when students did not understand contentprovided in English (Gillespie, 1996).

Formal and informal bilingual programs continue to operate invarious venues. Adult ESOL/literacy and workforce/workplace skillinstructors who are themselves bilingual and work within homo-genous bilingual communities have used informal bilingual strategiesin the classroom for many years. Many instructors move betweenthe two languages with little thought as to why and when to use thenative rather than the targeted language.

Focus onBasics


Staff collaborates to develop curriculum activities relevant to common office themes. For example, a thematic unitrelating to “Office Supplies” includes the following activities, framed with Equipped for the Future Standards. EFF is a framework for adult literacy curriculum and program development, developed over the past ten years under theNational Institute for Literacy (Stein, 2000).

Instructional Theme: Office SuppliesUse Information and Communications Technology

Students learn to use Excel Spreadsheets by reading Spanish-language instructional manuals and receiving oralinstruction and coaching in Spanish. However, the software used is the English-language version, and studentscreate a spreadsheet to track office supplies inventory using English supply terms.

Listen Actively & Speak So Others Can Understand

Students learn the English vocabulary they need to understand verbal requests for office supplies and to makeverbal requests for office supplies. Students engage in total physical response activities, which requires then toperform actions in response to verbal cues, such as “put the paper in the printer” and role-playing.

Solve Problems and Make Decisions

Students use Spanish to discuss related critical issues, such as: What do you do when you cannot access thesupplies you require to complete a work task? What do you do if your boss expects you to complete the taskanyway? This activity bridges into more English vocabulary and language development with role-playing asstudents deal with the final questions: To whom do you speak? What do you say? How do you say it?

Read with Understanding & Convey Ideas in Writing

Students use Spanish to discuss the organization of supply catalogs, to learn about the rationale for the use of purchaseorders, and the path these documents take through a company to a vendor. They work in pairs or groups to readsupply catalogs (in English), to compare products and prices from different vendors, and to complete purchase orders.

The lesson—lasting over the course of about 20 hours of instruction—culminates in a comprehensive bilingualdebriefing, during which students reflect on the entirety of the experience and delineate what they have learned, and why, and project ahead to their future roles as workers.

Developed by Gail Slater, instructor for the Texas Technology Pilot Project, operated under the AdEdge Computer Training Center; and Kay Taggart, Johns Hopkins University. Additional input provided by Andy Nash, Equipped for the Future. Project funded by theTexas Workforce Commission.

Curriculum Example 1: Computer Office Skills Program

Computer Office Skills Program

Computer Skills Training

Students receive instructions in Spanish coveringcomputer functions and use of common officeprograms. Students learn key computer terminology in English. Students will also create documents using English.

English for the Office Environment

Instructors teach bilingually. Students explore criticalthemes in Spanish. These themes “bridge” intoEnglish as students learn English vocabulary andlanguage structures they will need to communicateeffectively while working.

GED Test Preparation

Instructors teach strategies and contentknowledge in Spanish. Students takethe test in Spanish.


Focus onBasicsstruggled to report on small groupwork using English, one instructorremarked, “They can’t even think!”

Written surveys indicated thatinstructors had difficulty determiningwhat type of activities might best beimplemented bilingually, and whattype might best be implemented inEnglish only. Students’ commentsreflected this confusion. It wascommon to hear “The instructorspeaks too much English” and “Theinstructor doesn’t speak enoughEnglish” uttered by students in thesame classroom.

We hypothesized that by usingSpanish and English for specific anddifferent purposes within areas ofcurriculum and instruction, studentscould develop both English and jobskills simultaneously. As we worked to design and implement effectiveworkforce and workplace trainingprograms for dislocated as well asincumbent workers, we sought toanswer the following questions:

• If students are not able to use theirnative language to relate priorknowledge to classroom contexts,express ideas and opinions, anddevelop higher-order thinking skillsrelating to their targeted careerfield, will they fully benefit andthrive from the educationalexperience?

• How can we maximize learning ofEnglish and job skills by using bothlanguages in the classroom?

Bilingual Strategiesfor ContextualCurricula

Bilingual curricula andinstruction do not mean directtranslation of all course content.They mean using students’ nativelanguage to build conceptual under-standing and to process knowledgeand skills, while developing inter-personal communicative competencein English. Instructors must be clear

about when and how to use Spanishand English in the classroom (Baker,1997). Our observations indicatedthat instructors who use too muchSpanish can slow student languageacquisition to a crawl; instructors whouse too much English can quash thedevelopment of higher-order thinkingskills. For bilingual instruction to beeffective, we have found it criticalthat course developers, teachers, andstudents agree on what componentsshould implemented in English and what components should beimplemented in Spanish for themaximum benefit of the student.Instructors and students may movebetween the two languages at somepoints. For instance, students workwith their teachers to analyze thesimilarities and differences betweenthe two languages. This process helpsto demystify the second language.

Following the research describedabove, we spent six months workingwith a group of 12 bilingual instructors.We met weekly for three months fortraining and collaboration, focusingon bilingual teaching strategies forreading, writing, listening, speaking,and cooperative learning.

The curriculum developers andteachers we work with begin devel-oping a program by pinpointing awork-relevant theme. To do so, theyfirst collect information from companypersonnel or from more general infor-mation gathered about the target job.They ask the following questions andreach the following conclusions aboutuse of first and second language in in-struction (Taggart & Martinez, 2002):

• What pieces do students just needto “know” in order to carry outtasks relating to this theme? We canteach much of this in the students’native language.

• What will students need to read,listen to, write, and talk about in English related to those tasks? To whom will they need to speak?We must teach the English vocabulary and language struc-

tures students need to be able to communicate in work-relatedcontexts.

• When students engage on the job,what critical issues may arise aroundthis theme? We can use the stu-dents’ native language to explorethese issues, and then move toEnglish to develop any additionallanguage skills that emerge as aresult of these discussions.

Input from business and industryis important during this phase of cur-riculum development and instructionalplanning. Individuals who performrelated tasks in the workplace are inval-uable in helping us determine whichcomponents to teach in English andwhich to teach in Spanish. Interviews,focus groups, and observations help us answer the questions posed above.

Bilingual instructional curriculaand strategies are integral to ourinstructional programs for retrainingdislocated workers, and to programsproviding on-site instruction forincumbent workers seeking to moveup within their work environment.The programs have multiple com-ponents; students participate in work-specific training, related vocationalESOL instruction, and computertechnology training. Some also attendpreparation classes to take the tests of General Educational Development(GED) in Spanish. See pages 19 and21 for examples of curriculum fromprojects underway.

ChallengesOur initial inquiry revealed that

instructors did not make choices aboutlanguage of instruction based on anyexplicit criteria. Even when they aretrained in concepts of bilingual edu-cation, and practical strategies forusing two languages in the classroom,teachers have a tendency to fall backon prior practice. Even when teachersunderstand the advantages of strategiclanguage use, it is only with con-tinuing professional development and

“Communicating for Leadership” provides opportunities for students to do the following:

• Examine a communication challenge that exists in the workplace. A short dialogue introduces the challenge. Forinstance, employers report that workers are reticent to request clarification when they do not understand instructions.The introductory scenario is in English and focuses on an employee who does not understand, but tells his boss hedoes. The scenario provides a way for students to begin to connect with the communication challenge. It is a jumpingoff point for discussion and learning activities.

• Students then work in small groups to examine the communication challenge, discussing why workers are reticentto admit they do not understand, including listing potential repercussions that could result if an employee admits she does not understand, and if an employee does not admit it. Discussion may diverge to address questions suchas: What happens if you ask for clarification and your boss does not want to bother explaining again? What happensif your boss decides you are not qualified to do your job, since you do not understand? What do you do? What doyou say? How do you defend yourself? This discussion is undertaken in Spanish and connects to leadership themes,as students critically examine the challenge from the point of view of a supervisor trying to lead his or her employees.

• Instructors help students to develop English vocabulary and phrases needed to request clarification, addressrelated situations (discussed above), and help elicit clarification questions from other individuals (whom they maysupervise in the future).

• Students rewrite the original dialogue in English and effectively “turn around” the situation. For instance, in therewritten scenario, the employee might ask for clarification after his or her supervisor provides a prompt and someencouragement. Other dialogues may focus on related challenges that could occur. Instructors circulate and helpstudent with English constructions. Instructors may interject mini-lessons covering specific language usage points.Students practice the scenario and “perform” in front of their peers.

• Students engage in peer critique designed to help the actors in the dialogue refine their language production. This critiqueusually will occur bilingually, as students analyze the situation and work to help each other improve on multiple levels.

These activities are from a larger module framed under the Equipped for the Future standard called Listen Actively. “LeadershipConcepts” course conceived, developed, and taught by Rosa Valenzuela. Lesson example from the “Communication for Leadership”program component developed by Kay Taggart, Johns Hopkins University, with input from Sara Martinez and instructor VirginiaRascon, for the Workforce Adult Literacy Project operated under the El Paso Community College. Project funded by the TexasWorkforce Commission. Lesson format based on a model developed in 1994 by Luz Taboada and Kay Taggart (1994).

Curriculum Example 2: Leadership and Communications

Workplace Leadership and Communication

Leadership Concepts

Students receive instruction in Spanish covering suchtopics as group dynamics, team collaboration, and org-anizational models. They participate in a great deal ofrole playing and collaborative problem solving. The in-structor also introduces key concepts in oral English andprovides English handouts to reinforce this vocabulary.

Communicating for Leadership

Students develop the vocabulary knowledge andlanguage usage skills necessary to engage in effectiveinterpersonal communications in English on the job.Students participate in Spanish-language discussionthat relates communication themes back to leader-ship concepts.

Technology Skills

Students receive instructions in Spanish coveringcomputer functions and use of common office pro-grams. Students learn key computer terminology inEnglish. Students also create documents using English.

Focus onBasics



Focus onBasics

Before December, 2000,Kentucky’s Departmentfor Adult Education

and Literacy (DAEL) had de-livered all professional develop-ment opportunities to its 900adult educators in face-to-faceworkshops. The best attended ofthese was usually the two-dayOrientation to Adult Education,required of new instructors andprogram managers (Kentuckyhas approximately 120 newadult educators each year) andtypically offered four times ayear in various locations aroundthe state. In May, 2001, wepiloted our first “blended”professional development (PD)course: part delivered face-to-face and part delivered via theInternet. This quickly becameour professional developmentbranch’s preferred format fornearly all of our professionaldevelopment opportunities.Getting to this stage, how-ever, many hard lessons werelearned along the way, whichwe share in this article.

Reasons to ChangeKentucky ventured into the

online PD world via a blended formatfor a number of reasons. First, inApril, 2000, Senate Bill 1, alsoknown in Kentucky as the AdultEducation Act, passed. Kentucky’s

professional development systemneeded to prepare to support prac-titioners serving 300,000 adultlearners a year by the year 2020 incomparison to the approximately50,000 served in FY 2001 (Kestner,2002). As a result of the Adult Educa-tion Strategic Agenda that grew outof Senate Bill 1, Kentucky’s adulteducation programs are accountablefor meeting increasingly challengingperformance indicators. DAEL Com-missioner Dr. Cheryl King wants prac-titioners to maximize the time theyspend assisting learners in meetingtheir goals and minimize the time spenttraveling to attend PD workshops. PDdelivered online makes it possible tooffer orientation information withoutinterfering with teaching and learningactivities at adult learning centers.The time new teachers needed tospend away from their learning centersto attend the two-day orientationtraining was halved by one-day face-to-face training supplemented withonline work.

Improved consistency and reducedtravel expenses for trainers and par-ticipants were other good reasons fortrying what we termed “e-PD.” One ofthe most compelling factors supportingthe use of web-delivered training wasthe opportunity to offer orientationinformation any time, day or night.Our online courses could be started atany time of year using any computerconnected to the Internet; newinstructors no longer had to wait forour next scheduled face-to-face sessionto be introduced to their roles andresponsibilities. Also, the foundationfor relationships with DAEL staff and

support have they been able to imple-ment it effectively.

As the Hispanic population growsin the United States (Guzman, 2001),and as the need for “thinking” workersincreases, adult bilingual workforcetraining holds great potential forhelping individuals advance onmultiple levels simultaneously.

About the AuthorsKay Taggart has worked in education,including community, family and work-force literacy, for nearly 20 years. Sheteaches, develops curricula, trains teachers,and writes grants in El Paso, Texas.

Sara Martinez manages Workplace Lit-eracy at El Paso Community College. Inpartnership with Fortune 500 companies,she has been implementing instruction forincumbent workers for the past 13 years. Inpartnership with Motivation, Education,and Training (MET), Ms. Martinez alsooversees integrated bilingual programs forthe advancement of migrant and seasonalfarm workers in the area.

ReferencesBaker, C. (1997). Foundations of Bilingual

Education and Bilingualism. Bristol, PA:Multilingual Matters.

Gillespie, M. (1996). Learning to Work ina New Land: A Review and Sourcebookfor Vocational and Workplace ESL.Washington, DC: Center for AppliedLinguistics.

Guzmán, B. (2001). The Hispanic Pop-ulation: Census 2000 Brief. Washington,DC: U.S. Census Bureau. (C2KBR/01-3).

Stein, S. (2000). Equipped for the FutureContent Standards. Washington, DC:National Institute for Literacy

Taboada, L. & Taggart, K. (1994).Workplace Communications. El Paso,TX: El Paso Community College.

Taggart, K., & Martinez, S. (2002). AdultBilingual Curriculum Institute: CoreInstructor Training. El Paso, TX: JohnsHopkins University. ❖

Same Curriculum, New Mode of DeliveryAdapting ABE Professional Development to the Internetby Jane Martel

Focus onBasics


with peers across the state could bebuilt immediately.

Before adopting this blendedapproach, we had burdened new-comers with reams of paper that theyprobably never read. No matter howexcited participants are after a work-shop, few have the time to researchfurther and read materials takenhome. With our new approach,participants are asked to completeonline modules in advance of aworkshop. This let us raise theincoming level of knowledge andexpect higher quality interactions inthe face-to-face components of thetraining.

From informationgleaned at regional professional de-velopment meetings with peer PD pro-fessionals, it seemed that few stateshad ventured very far into online PDdelivery. At the time, much had beenwritten about both online educationand face-to-face training. Only nowdo we see a proliferation of materialon the topic of blending the twoformats. Our interpretation of themerits and challenges of the onlineenvironment combined with whatwe knew about face-to-face realitiessuggested that blended courses offeredthe best opportunity to capture thestrengths of both delivery methods.

Testing Our Theory Plans were underway by May,

2001, to create a web site and “portal”for virtual adult education with the

assistance of our new partner, KentuckyVirtual University (KYVU). Withouta strong tech partner, such bold effortsin new territory would probably nothave happened as soon as they did. Ourchallenge was to convert our two-dayOrientation to Adult Education to ablend of one-day of face-to-face trainingfollowed by five units of online informa-tion. We embraced online coursecreation as an opportunity to use a newtool, make background material andfacts “come alive,” and differentiatecognitive information from behavioralchanges. Using the Internet, we wereable to link users immediately to ex-citing sites related to the information

presented and to generate profes-sional discourse by creating

online discussions. PD branch members

met to adaptcurriculum to this new instructionalenvironment. To determine whichtopics to deliver in a workshop andwhich to post online, we reviewedwhat we knew at the time: “Cog-nitive objectives are the most easilyadaptable to distance education”(Thach, 1996, p. 11). Performance-based and attitudinal objectives andthose requiring use of interpersonalskills were determined most appro-priate for classroom delivery (Thach,1996, p. 11; Brown, 2000).

We also considered the com-plexity of the material and its relativeimportance to new practitioners.Those topics deemed complex and/orvital to adult education — recruit-

ment (45 minutes), orientation andgoal setting (two hours), assessment(two hours), and professional develop-ment (15 minutes) — were covered in our one-day face-to-face training.We expected that those topics wouldgenerate many questions and wouldrequire the explanation of conceptsand procedures in a variety of ways.Topics that were primarily infor-mation only (cognitive objectives)and that were less likely to requirediscussion (e.g., an overview of adulteducation, the adult learner, learnersupport and retention, and legal issues)were converted for online delivery.

Creating an interactive groupenvironment online differs fromcreating it in a face-to-face environ-ment. In the latter, other groupmembers tend to assist, or at leastserve as catalysts, in the effort to

draw out communication from reticent partici-

pants. Based on ourexperience and on

discussions withfacilitators ofother onlinecourses, how-ever, in an online

environment, thisresponsibility seems

to fall entirely on thefacilitator. Each partici-

pant was encouraged to postcomments about the online materialto a discussion board. More difficult,however, was ensuring that the dis-cussion board would contain con-versations among participants, notsimply postings of reactions by in-dividuals. Schweizer (1999) iden-tifies numerous ideas on maximizingthe use of the online environment.Among them are linking web sites to the content, bringing course mem-bers together for face-to-face inter-action to build group cohesiveness,communicating regularly with coursemembers in an informal and clearwriting style, being responsive to questions and concerns, usingseparate discussion boards for eachgroup, and using the discussion board

Focus onBasics


S ince our Orientation to AdultEducation pilot, we havedeveloped and delivered

11 other e-PD courses, most in ablended format. The lessons wehave learned are obvious whenviewed in retrospect. At the time,however, the choice was either todo it right or do it now. We chosethe latter and learned much fromdoing so.

All participants need to have theminimum hardware, software, Internetconnectivity, and the technical supportneeded to access and participate in anonline course. Course developers oftenfail to consider that many educators usecomputers less sophisticated than thoseon which the materials are developed;they also often face the challenges of firewalls, proxy servers, etc. Suchissues should be addressed before aneducator registers for an online courseor unit.

Courses must be built with the low-est common technology denominatorin mind. Posting huge files, such asvideo-streaming, long audio clips, andPowerPoint presentations, which takeseveral minutes to download using a56K modem, results only in frustrationfor low-end users. Lower-tech optionsshould be offered for low end users. Forexample, if an audio clip is included, thena written script should also be available.

Beyond hardware considerations,participants must have the requisitecomputer skills prior to taking an onlinecourse. It was sobering for me to realizehow many of our educators had neveraccessed the Internet or used a compu-ter. We now list prerequisite computerskills in our course publicity and in reg-istration confirmation letters, althoughwe do not offer training through theDAEL. Participants must be able to starta computer, connect to and navigate theInternet, manipulate windows, be ableto print, scroll through, and read andreply to e-mail.

All participants should have theirown personal e-mail address. Not allemployers give part-time instructors e-mail accounts. Free e-mail servicesexist; however, many adult educationcenters function within restrictiveenvironments that do not allow for thereceipt of e-mail from free account sites.Without an ability to communicate by e-mail, much of the potential benefit of anonline course is lost. As in a face-to-faceenvironment, the communication thatoccurs among participants, and be-tween the instructor and the learner, is critical. Some course managementsystems offer an internal messaginginterface that operates independently of

e-mail and can be used for individual orgroup communication.

What if an instructor cannot meet the first three conditions of participation?Despite the requirement that literacy pro-viders have access to computers and theInternet, and that new staff must completethe Orientation in whatever format it isoffered (e-PD), not all do. Those withoutcomputer skills, access to the Internet, ande-mail had no alternative way to partake ofour PD offerings.

Pilot testing a new course with alimited number of participants is preferableto immediately launching it statewide.Running a pilot, or field test, allows for theidentification and correction of problems,errors, and areas of confusion in the coursein a relatively controlled environment. Inthe long run, it saves time.

Experienced current practitionersshould be consulted every step of the way,from creating the course outline, to pro-viding content or editing drafts, pilot testingthe course, providing feedback, and per-haps facilitating online discussion. Theidealistic vision of state department staffmust be tempered with the realistic per-spectives of those in the field if online coursecurriculum development is to be successful.

Ample time must be allotted forcourse development and delivery. Theamount of time required to create andmanage an online course should be gen-erously estimated, and then tripled. Creationof the course is but a small segment of thetime required. We grossly underestimatedhow time consuming it would be to teachor facilitate a course.

What do facilitators do? Facilitatorsanswer learners’ questions about navi-gating the course, reveal content atappropriate times during the course (tokeep learners more or less together, wedisplayed two modules a week so thatlearners would not bound ahead andfinish), respond to submitted assignments,start discussions and moderate the coursediscussion board, monitor learner partici-pation, and fix broken web links (Schweizer,1999). Without adequate facilitation time,a course threatens to become a stalerepository of content and more of a self-paced tutorial than a place and reasonfor lively exchange and sharing amongparticipants. Our instructors so loved their

time together in workshops thatwe wanted to keep this as-

pect of sharing andexchange of ideasalive online as well as in the workshop.

What takes somuch time? Responding to

myriad e-mails from partici-pants. And, unlike a workshop,

answering once does not instantlybenefit the entire class (although amessage board or posted announce-ment can be used to avoid answeringthe same question from multiple partici-pants). Monitoring the discussion boardcan take hours. Inappropriate messagesmust be dealt with, erroneous infor-mation must be corrected, and partici-pation by non-responding studentsmust be elicited repeatedly. Then thereare the technical problems to be cor-rected: a file won’t open, a participantcan’t log in, the font is too small andthe content too long to comfortablyread on the screen, a participant needsassistance printing material. It all takestime, and lots of it.

Advance promotion of the onlineconcept is a must. Learning online isforeign territory for many. Given theopportunity, many would choose to re-main off-line. Offering strong material,sharing testimonials from your pilotparticipants — their respected peers —and promoting the new venture in apositive and exciting way in advancewill do much to dispel initial resistance.As with any marketing endeavor, thebenefits must be clearly presented.

Delivery and support partnersshould be selected with care. Work outin detail and in advance exactly whatrole each party will play.

• Who will provide technical supportto learners and to course instructorsand what, exactly, does that mean?During what hours and days of theweek will support be provided? Inwhat form may users request help(e.g., e-mail, telephone, web form)?

• Where will you place your courses?What platform will you use? Whocontrols it? Will it disappear at theend of a one-year contract? Whathappens to your courses then? Whowill be responsible for maintainingand updating the content?

• Will you build a “front end” systemfor information and registration?Why? Is the process designedprimarily to benefit the learner ormanagement? Be wary of the latter,if it interferes with the consumer’sexperience. ❖

Focus onBasics


to summarize discussions and raisenew questions. We used these ideas asguidelines when building our course.

Our first restructured Orientationto Adult Education was offered to apilot group of 21 new instructors fromthroughout the state. All 120 of theABE program managers in Kentuckywere notified via e-mail of this pilotand were asked to encourage their newinstructors (hired within six months) toparticipate. All new adult educatorswho expressed interest were allowed toparticipate. We started by gathering thegroup for a day of face-to-face training.Thereafter, participants had threeweeks to complete the online units.

We had several goals for the course.As course developers, we wanted thepilot to answer the following ques-tions about the online component:• What was the average amount

of time it took to complete thecourse? This would allow us toaward professional developmentcredit appropriately.

• What was confusing about eachmodule? This would allow us toimprove upon it for future coursedelivery, such as identifyingmodules that lent themselvesbetter to face-to-face delivery (e.g.,data collection and reporting).

• What suggestions did users havefor improving the course? Thisallowed us to improve futurecourse delivery.

Upon completion of a unit, theparticipant was required to e-mailanswers to four questions to the onlineinstructor. This let us know whetherthey mastered — or even looked at —the material. Three subject matterexperts contributed content for the on-line course but only one (JM) facili-tated the online course. I forwardedthe module evaluations to the subjectmatter expert who had provided itscontent. The questions were subjective,prompting opinions of what materialwas most important and most con-fusing, and allowing participants tooffer suggestions for improvement andto identify the amount of time theyspent on the unit. At the end of the

three-week course, we asked several ofthe participants to join the DAEL PDstaff for a focus group. Notes taken ontheir likes, dislikes, and suggestionswere used in conjunction with the e-mail responses to improve the coursefor its next delivery.

Results of the PilotReactions to our blended orienta-

tion were, for the most part, very positive.Some summed the experience up with“It was fun.” Other supportive adjectivesused by participants included “conven-ient” and “informative.” They likedthe tasks and wanted more optionalactivities added to the course and moreinformation added about the topicsthat were introduced. They liked thequizzes and research requirements.

The negative responses includedthose from participants who preferredin-person discussions to the “discussionboard responses that seemed fabri-cated to complete the assignment.”Some were frustrated by the amount ofsupplemental resources offered online;although these readings were optional,they wanted to read all of the materialsand explore all of the links but didnot have the time to do so. Othersexperienced technical difficultiesaccessing some of the online materialsor had no access to the Internet atwork, requiring them to complete thecourse from home on their own time.Based on the evaluations of each moduleand the focus group, we determinedthat some topics warranted coverageboth online and face-to-face. Forexample, data collection and reportingwere too important and too confusingto deliver solely online. As a result ofthe pilot, we split this unit so that it iscovered using both delivery methods.The focus group suggested that wereverse the order of the blend: instruc-tors should be allowed to go onlineimmediately upon hire to receive anintroduction to every unit. The day of training would follow the onlineexperience, allowing face-to-facediscussion and an activity to reinforcethe material presented online.

We have offered all of our blendedcourses this way since the field test.Starting with the online portion allowsfor learning on demand shortly afterhire, but our online participation ratehas suffered as a result. In our fieldtest, 10 percent of participants did notcomplete the online course require-ments in the time allotted, comparedto closer to 30 percent failing to com-plete it now. Practitioners are moreconfused as to how to get started.Also, participants seem more reluctantto participate in online discussions,perhaps because they have never mettheir online peers. In our pilot, we didnot create groups, but we plan to doso in the future in an effort to stim-ulate discussion within a moreintimately sized unit.

“Like any other instructional tool,technology can serve to perpetuatepoor educational practice or it canbecome a means for transforminglearning” (Imel, 1998a). Using tech-nology for PD is not magic; principlesof adult learning must still be appliedand built into any PD curriculum.These include involving the targetaudience in planning and implemen-tation; using participants’ experience asa resource; encouraging self-directedlearning and collaboration; creating asupportive learning environment;using materials relevant to the worldof the learner; and incorporating theuse of small groups in learningactivities (Imel, 1998b).

ConclusionDespite setbacks, Kentucky per-

sists in its commitment to blended PD.We are offering three new blendedcourses. We envision an increased useof webcasts and, perhaps, materialsavailable on CDs (to reduce total re-liance on the Internet for those withslow or limited access), and a strength-ened resolve for fostering interactionin our blended courses. Never satis-fied, we look forward to new lessonsto be learned and to using them toimprove our e-PD program for yearsto come.


Focus onBasicsReferencesAdult Education Action Agenda,

February 9, 2003. http://adulted.state.ky.us/CPE_adult_education_action_plan.htm

Brown, B. (2000). “Web-based training.”ERIC Digest, No. 218, EDO-CE-OO-218. http://www.ericfacility.net/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed445234.htmlColumbus, OH: The Ohio StateUniversity Center on Education andTraining for Employment.

Imel, S. (1998a). “Technology and adultlearning: Current perspectives,” ERICDigest No. 197, ED421639, http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed421639.html. Columbus, OH: ERIC Clearing-house on Adult Career, and VocationalEducation.

Imel, S. (1998b). “Using adult learningprinciples in adult basic and literacyeducation.” ERIC Practice ApplicationBrief. ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult,Career, and Vocational Education.Columbus, OH: The Ohio State Univer-sity Center on Education and Trainingfor Employment, College of Education.

Kentucky Virtual Adult Education(2002). Home page. February 9, 2003.http://www.kyvae.org

Kestner, S. (2002). “New directions forprofessional development: Kentucky’sjourney.” Focus on Basics, 5D, 23-28.

Schweizer, H. (1999). Designing andTeaching an On-line Course. NeedhamHeights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Senate Bill No. 1. (2000). SB 1. GeneralAssembly, Commonwealth of Kentucky.February 9, 2003. http://www.lrc.state.ky.us/Statrev/ACTS2000/0526.pdf

Thach, E. (1996). “Effective distancelearning,” INFO-LINE, Issue 9607.Alexandria, VA: American Society forTraining and Development.

About the AuthorJane Martel was a consultant for profes-sional development at Kentucky’s DAEL fortwo years. She chaired the virtual resourcedatabase development team, created andfacilitated online PD courses, and managedlaunches of web-delivered curricula foradult learners. She is now an instructionaldesigner for the Verizon Literacy Univer-sity Project at the National Center forFamily Literacy in Louisville. ❖

With approval fromstate and programadministrators, a

group of practitioners in Oregonbegan a statewide curriculumchange process. Even with a “top-down” mandate and“bottom-up” participation, the process moved slowly.What steps are necessary foreffective curriculum change?What lessons can be learnedfrom Oregon’s experience?Practitioner Dennis Clark, akey participant in the effort,reflects on the process as itappeared from his perspective.

In 1997, Oregon was awash in educational reform. The publicschools had developed a 10th gradeCertificate of Initial Mastery (CIM)and were working on a 12th gradeCertificate of Advanced Mastery(CAM). The university system was promoting a Proficiency-basedAdmission Standards System (PASS),while community colleges wereconstructing a set of proficiencyexpectations for entry into programs.Oregon’s existing Adult High SchoolDiploma (AHSD) curriculum guide-lines needed updating. In Oregon,basic skills programs are housed in17 community colleges, which aretwo-year colleges created as com-prehensive adult educational institu-tions. Skills enhancement is a coreelement of the system. Some of usin adult basic education (ABE)feared that, without similar educa-tional reform in ABE, the AHSD

diploma and General EducationalDevelopment (GED) options mightbe seen as lower tier credentialsthan the CAM, out of step with thegrowing expectations of education inour state.

Oregon had AHSD andABE/GED curriculum committees,sponsored and supported by stateand local program directors. I wasteaching at the time in our local adulthigh school, and was chairing theAHSD curriculum committee. A newcurriculum specialist at the state officejoined our group in the spring of 1997.After familiarizing herself with ourcurricula, and taking into account theother state and national curriculumefforts that loomed large, she wasconvinced of the need for somethingother than the incremental curricularupdates that had been done over thepast decade. In December, four of us — myself, two other basic skillsinstructors, and a program director —from the AHSD curriculum com-mittee met with her to brainstormwhat might be done. We hoped tocreate some short- and long-termobjectives that would address changingcurriculum needs in the state andhelp us to find a place in this neweducational landscape.

Someone suggested that we workbackwards from our desired outcomes,creating a plan based on what wewanted to achieve. We did not rec-ognize the symbology of this act.Our choice mimicked the standards-based curriculum paradigm that was sweeping the rest of Oregon’seducational system. We sketchedout a timeline for the transition. Weestimated two years to complete, three years at the most.

Changing a State’s Approachto Curriculum: Insight fromOregon’s Effortsby Dennis Clark

Focus onBasics


Proposal to the StateAfter the December, 1997,

meeting, we created a proposal —which was accepted — to the statebasic skills program directors formoving ahead on state curriculumreforms. The state directors agreed tosupport one or two instructors fromeach of their colleges to be on theworking group. The activity had wide-spread support: our committee wasoriginally created with state-levelapproval, the state curriculum specialistwas involved, and program-supportedinstructors were included. We set up a liaison system through whichinformation would bechanneled. Each effortwould inform and beinformed by the effortsof the other levels. I was particularly excitedbecause I saw this ascurriculum change fromthe bottom up: instruc-tors being a moving forcebehind it. Policy wouldemerge in parallel and thefeeling of compliance fromabove would not be an issue.Yes, an “official” decision tochange had been made, butit was left to teachers to de-termine what that changewould be. We did have to solveseveral dilemmas: ensure what wedid fit with state secondary levelcurriculum guidelines, the changingGED, emerging Equipped for theFuture (EFF, the National Institute forLiteracy’s change project) standards,and existing secondary guidelines.Although the impetus for change camefrom the outside, the creation of anew approach was under the directionof instructors. Isn’t that the ideal?

Developing theGuidelines

Our next step was to recruit theinstructors whom the programs agreedto support. To broaden the circle ofgrass-roots-level participation, we

gathered likely “early implementers”of change: instructors who wereconsidered leaders in the state adulteducation field. About 20 peoplejoined our working group, whichcame to be known as Cohort One.After examining a variety of curricu-lum ideas, we decided on a standardsformat. We set out to learn moreabout standards, acting as a loosestudy circle, reviewing everything we could find on standards. We alsoreviewed lessons, units, and coursescurrently in use in Oregon’s adultbasic education system, andconsidered

how they could beadapted to a standards-based approach.

We thought that we could cross-reference the variety of standards-based systems such as EFF, SCANS(the Department of Labor’s list ofstandards required for workplacesuccess), and CIM/CAM (the OregonHigh School’s sets of secondary stan-dards). We wanted to create a largechart that displayed the correlationsamong them, allowing people usingone set of standards to see how theyrelated to the others. We consideredit important for our secondary stan-dards to align with the Oregon publichigh schools because the latter wouldonly refer people to our alternativeprograms if they believed that ourprograms would be meeting the state’sintended secondary requirements.

I attempted to create the matrix,

as did a graduate student at OregonState. We both found that eachgroup that created a set of curriculumstandards used a different conceptualstructure and vocabulary. For example,what a student should be able to do,which is the first element of manycurriculum standards guidelines,might be accomplished by reaching a benchmark (Oregon’s EducationalAct for the 21st Century); meetingspecific criteria (PASS); beingdeemed proficient (PREP); or demon-

strating performance ata benchmark along acontinuum (EFF). Thematrix task was bothfrustrating and ulti-mately impossible.

We finallyarrived at a list ofgeneral contentareas for Oregon’sGED/AHSD sec-ondary standardscurriculum: lang-uage arts, math-ematics, science,social studies,workplace skills,and life skills.

Course content stan-dards detail the required knowledgeand skills necessary for each subjectarea. We also developed a list of tasksthrough which mastery of a standardcould be demonstrated, and ways inwhich to assess a student’s successfuldemonstration of the task.

Once the standards guidelineshad been created, I started makingsmall changes in the way I taught. Bythe time I was reassigned to the skillscenter of a one-stop workforce de-velopment center, in 1999, I wasstarting to function from an outcomesperspective. A lot of my old curricu-lum was of the “understand” and“know” variety, concepts that are prettysubjective in nature. The teacherdecides if the student knows it orunderstands it. Standards-basedcurricula provide more clarity aboutwhat students need to know and beable to do, what tasks they can do to


Focus onBasicsdemonstrate their ability, and howthey will be assessed. In many stan-dards-based assessments, a matrix isused to display what constitutes adeveloping performance level, whatmeets the standard, and what pro-ficiency exceeds the level required.

Introducing theWork to Others

In Oregon, significantprofessional development takes placeat summer conferences; they are also a place where ideas can germinate.One of our strategies was to share ouremerging set of curriculum standardsat the Adult Secondary StandardsRetreat, held in July, 1997. The threeday event was attended by about 80 people, about half of whom hadelected to come because,we hope, of interest. Theother half were sent bytheir program directors.We introduced how to usea standards-based curricu-lum, how to do unitplanning, and how tocreate and use scoringguides. We provided someplanning forms the cohorthad developed that in-structors could use to createcurriculum using a standardsparadigm, and included time forteacher reflection. At the end, smallgroups shared examples of classroomactivities that they had created atthe retreat.

Over the next year, the standardswere refined further, public commentwas solicited, policy issues were ad-dressed, and a second cohort ofinstructors was trained. A second,larger conference, “Equipped for theFuture: A Promise to Oregon,” heldin August, 1999, familiarized more ofOregon’s ABE practitioners with stan-dards-based curriculum and connectedus with the emerging energy of thenational EFF movement. We led twosessions: an open house that featuredinformation on standards-based projectsand materials developed and imple-

mented by members of our group; anda workshop in which the state of ourcurriculum work was explained. Reviewsof the sessions were positive, but ageneral attitude of “wait and see” pre-vailed. They wanted to see the policyguidelines before they made personalchanges in their method of instruction.In a video about paradigm pioneers,“wait and see” folks are called settlers:defined as those who will not go intothe new frontier until the explorers andthe paradigm pioneers tell them thatit is safe. I think change is difficult formany people, and time for curriculumdevelopment is not always compensatedfor. It was becoming clear that systemicchange would not be successful withoutsupport being provided for stafftraining.

PolicyDevelopment

While our group of instructors wasworking, albeit more slowly than we ex-pected, a group of program directorsand state officials — a subcommitteeof the Oregon Council of Adult BasicSkills Development — met quarterly

to create the policy guidelines thatwould make our standards-basedcurriculum official. I was the liaisonbetween the instructor group and thepolicy group.

This group tackled several majorissues and many smaller ones as well.For example, a big issue was whetherGED preparation and AHSD coursesshould have the same set of outcomestandards. The discussion was philo-sophical and challenged many of us tothink differently about what we wantto provide for our students. Did wewant to simply prepare students topass their GED exams, thereby re-sponding to the voiced goal of justabout almost every adult who comesto us for GED preparation? Or, do wehave a greater responsibility to pre-pare them for higher education orfor their roles as workers, communitymembers, and family members? In theend, we agreed that furthering lifeskills is as important as helping peopleget a secondary certificate and there-fore the same standards for curriculumshould apply to both activities. Toget to this decision, however, tookmore time.

Another stumbling block wasunanticipated. Community colleges

are the home base for ABE programsin Oregon. We havetwo types of high schoolprograms in them. Inone, the ABE/GEDdepartment provides theinstruction using the statecurriculum guidelines.The other type supportslearners who, althoughthey dropped out of highschool, can pass the localcollege entrance exams and go straight into collegeclasses. But these students

want high school diplomas. Severalcolleges had a correlation system, sothat an adult getting an associatesdegree could meet the high schoolrequirement at the same time. Itsounds good and, for a small numberof students, it is great. The dilemmaoccurred when we realized that, in

Focus onBasics


shifting to a stan-dards-based approach, we were sayingthat students needed to be able to knowand do certain things within theircourse work, but these students werenot subject to the same outcome require-ments in college classes. Dealing withthis dilemma took time: everyone’sneeds had to be represented in thepolicies.

And, of course, all along the waywe were discovering that many schoolshad developed their own ways ofdoing things. For example, we tradi-tionally allow learners to bring creditsfrom an accredited program into theadult high school. But what if some-one comes in with a “D”? In a stan-dards-based system, it is unlikely thatthat person demonstrated an adequatelevel of knowledge and skills in acourse while achieving a D grade.Many such challenges emerged to slowdown the policy development process.

A draft set of guidelines, titledOregon’s Adult Secondary ProgramManual, was published in June, 2000,after being approved by the StateBoard of Education. A slightly revisedand improved version was released in 2002. While the guidelines werecreated, field tested, and revised, the

state officecontinued toconduct trainingaround the stateon an individualprogram or re-gional basis. Onesuch effort exploredwhat our new sec-ondary standardshad in commonwith EFF. A state-wide electronic

discussion list was createdon which practitionerscould share information,curriculum ideas, and read working committeereports. The list was very helpful for sharinginformation and reports,but for some reason did

not generate the curriculum-sharingchatter that we had anticipated.

Theory and Practice Today

Policy guidelines are in place, andthe project is moving to another stage.On paper, the systemic changes havebeen achieved, but much more workremains to bring the standards-basedcurriculum approach into the classroom.An intensive professional developmenttraining is planned for twocolleges this calendar year.A set of trainers will workclosely with programinstructors over six toeight weeks to supportindividual and grouptransition.

My own teaching haschanged. On a daily basis,I am conscious of what Ihope students will be ableto learn and demonstrate that theyhave learned while I have them. Inthe past I had a curriculum outline: I went from a to b to z. Now I focusmore on “today we’re doing "x" and"what I want you to come away withis …” For example, in a workshop onworkplace culture, I might say that an

outcome is that everyone learns atleast two new ways to determine theculture of a business where they areapplying for a job. At the end of theactivity, I ask each student what newperspectives he or she had acquired asa result of this class related to under-standing workplace culture as a jobseeker. I get an informal assessmentimmediately from each session.

Lessons LearnedThe past five years have been an

interesting, crazy journey. We certainlylearned a lot. A major curricularchange takes longer than we everimagined: collaborative work andsystemic change involve hard work.We tried to involve as many people aspossible, at different levels, from thebeginning. We also tried to keep stake-holders informed at every step of theway. Perhaps we did not do a goodenough job early on making sure thatthe need for change was well under-stood by teachers.

I still think that the best way tomake a major curriculum change is to start at the classroom level, withteachers, discovering their issues andfears, and then enlisting them as theagents of change. That scenario wasdifficult to put into practice. At somepoint, we understood that change was

not going to occur until the policyguidelines did.

Professional development supporthas also proven to be an integralaspect of this change effort. What I think we did in Oregon was try tobring in new — although not radical— ideas and make them our own as we

“Professionaldevelopment support

has also proven to be anintegral aspect of this

change effort.”


Focus onBasicscreated the supporting policy system.Teachers are meeting now, since theguidelines have moved to a compliancephase, to share curriculum and ex-change ideas for teaching in this newway. As one early participant men-tioned recently, “I suppose none of us could have predicted where we arenow, how long the project would take,or how our roles in supporting it wouldchange. I’m so glad that we’re stillcarrying the project forward.”

About the AuthorDennis Clark is a workplace skillsinstructor at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon. He now teaches at aOne Stop Skills Center leading classesand workshops in basic computer skills,becoming a more valuable employee, and creating your future. He is also anEquipped for the Future field researcherand life strategies coach. ❖

Ithink of curriculum as acombination of scope andsequence: what will be

taught, and in what order. I differentiate among curricu-lum, materials, and methods,although I recognize thattogether they result in whatgets taught, how it gets taught,and, perhaps, what gets learned.As a classroom teacher, mypreferred curriculum is onethat emerges from the inter-action between me and mystudents. That’s a luxury we had to forgo in Guinea,West Africa.

World Education/Guinea staffmembers and I had to create a basicPulaar literacy curriculum to be usedby more than 1,000 adult basiceducation teachers who have noaccess to computers, photocopiers, or even flipcharts and markers. Therestraints of the environment requiredthat the materials be created for theteachers: no last minute rushing to a photocopier in a community 40miles of unpaved road from thenearest electricity. The teacherswould be volunteers chosen for theirliteracy skills and for their standingin their communities rather than fortheir professional status; most turnedout to be farmers with two to fiveyears of formal schooling. Theywould receive only two weeks ofteacher training, so the methodologyhad to be predetermined as well. Thetask became developing a learners’book and a teachers’ manual: cur-riculum, materials, and methodsrolled into one.

ScopeThe scope of the curriculum was

easy. This literacy course is a compo-nent of a larger project that focuses on the community’s role in improvingthe quality of public education at thelocal level. The project strengthensparent associations that, among othertasks, build schools, recruit teachers,dig latrines, and encourage families to send girls as well as boys to school.The topics covered in the coursewould be the same as those covered in the training given to the parentassociation board members. Thereading skills covered would be letterrecognition, sound/symbol identification,decoding, and comprehension. The writing skills would move fromgripping a pencil to writing letters,words, and sentences. We did notworry about capital letters, punctu-ation — except for the lowly period— or grammar until the second phaseof the literacy course, and the secondphase of curriculum development.

The parameters of the projectdictated the topics to be covered inthe curriculum. The content — whatto teach about each topic — hadrestraints as well. It had to be a man-ageable amount of information that theteachers either already knew or couldmaster easily. A team of 30 Guineansresponsible for training the parentassociations reviewed each trainingtopic to determine the three pointsabout the topic that they consideredto be the most important to convey.These points became the content.

SequenceThe sequence of the material was

trickier. It would be determined asmuch by the methodology as by any

Resources onStandards-Based

CurriculumHarris, D., & Carr, J. (1996). How

to Use Standards in the Classroom.Alexandria, VA: Association forSupervision and CurriculumDevelopment.

Marzano, R., & Kendall, J. (1996). AComprehensive Guide To: DesigningStandards-Based Districts, Schools,and Classrooms. Aurora, CO: Mid-Continent Regional EducationalLaboratory.

Stein, S. (2001). Equipped for theFuture Content Standards: WhatAdults Need to Know and Be Able to Do in the 21st Century, 3rd ed.Washington, DC: NationalInstitute for Literacy.

Woodard, K. (ed.) (1999). Alignmentof National and State Standards: AReport by the GED Testing Service.Washington, DC: AmericanCouncil on Education, GEDTesting Service.

Also see Focus on Basics, Volume 3,Issue C, 1999, devoted to standards-based education. Available onlineat http://ncsall.gse.harvard.edu

Creating Curricula forChallenging Circumstancesby Barbara Garner

Focus onBasics


logical unfolding of topics. We woulduse a modified version of the lessonplan used in many World Educationliteracy programs around the world.Each lesson starts the same way: thelearners work in small groups toanalyze a picture that illustrates aproblem related to the theme andcontent of the curriculum. Followingthe analysis and discussion, theteacher introduces a word or phraserelated to the discussion, and, via thatword, a letter, or sometimes two. Thenew letter or letters form the focus ofthe literacy skills part of the lesson.For example, the theme of one lessonis the value of having water availableat a school. The illustration showschildren outside a school, a hot sunblazing above, and everyone lookingvery thirsty. The related word is “water.”

Why start with analysis of a pic-ture? One reason is that it’s interesting.

The learners are men and womenwho come to class after doing hardphysical labor, gathering water andwood, cooking, and cultivating. It’shot outside, and even hotter in theclassroom. The benches are hard.Knowing that class starts with anengaging, stimulating activity is

motivating for students. Anotherreason is that it gets the participantsaccustomed to analyzing and findingsolutions for community problemsthey often have not realized that theycan change.

The literacy part of the lessonshinges on what World Education callsa “key” word or phrase and the newletters therein. The image analysisand key word approach is an adapta-tion of the Frierien concept of codes:pictures and words used to initiate acritical analysis of a situation. In theclasses in Guinea, however, becauseof the focus of the project and thelimited amount of teacher trainingtime available, the analysis rarely goes beyond the surface to the morepolitical underpinnings of a problem.

Teaching words that relate toissues in the learners’ civic lives isanother deliberate choice borrowed

from Friere; it also honors the traditionof the Citizenship Schools, in whichAfrican Americans learned to readand write to pass the voter registra-tion test, using the Constitution,among other texts. These schoolsemphasized problem solving and theidea that there is no such thing as a

“hard” word: words that representsubstantive issues in learners’ lives arewords worth teaching, regardless oftheir length or unfamiliar meaning.In addition, World Education’smethod doesn’t make learners wait to read real words while they learnthe alphabet. Moving directly intoreading and writing words before thefull alphabet is learned — a story,using words that include only theletters taught in lessons one to eight, begins in lesson eight — is motivating as well.

As for sequence, the challengebecomes determining what words or phrases to use to represent eachtopic, and in what sequence to putthe topics. Each key word is thesource of one or, at the most, two newletters. The sequencing of each wordis of paramount importance. It’s likedoing three-dimensional tic-tac-toe.For example, the phrase in the firstlesson is “be soodii defte,” whichmeans “purchase books.” The first twoletters are i and t. The phrase for thesecond lesson, “mahen suturaaji kalekkol,” which means “construct alatrine at school,” contains i and t,and introduces two new letters: u andl. And so on. The same team of 30teacher trainers and teachers workedwith me to come up with appro-priate illustrations and key words tointroduce all the topics and all theletters of the alphabet. We shuffledand reshuffled words, moving wordsthat provided high-frequency lettersto early spots in the sequence, andmoving those words with letters usedless frequently in common vocabularyto later spots. Since we were actuallycreating the same curriculum in twolanguages, Pulaar and Malinke, we didit twice.

ResultsOnce we were done, we had a

curriculum: a scope and sequence —what would be taught and in whatorder. We also had materials, in theform of a learner’s book, and methods,captured in the teachers’ book. The

Learners in Guinea practice new literacy skills.


Focus onBasicscourse is being given now in morethan 200 villages. I’m writing thisarticle in Dabola, Guinea, during aweek of in-service workshops for 29 ofthe volunteer teachers and 11 teachertrainers responsible for supporting all the volunteer teachers. Theimpact of the course on communitiesand community members is alreadynoticeable. Parents are giving theirdaughters less housework and moretime to do homework, some girls havebeen enrolled in school based onwhat their parents learned in class,among other effects. Literacy skillshave been put to use: tailors reportwriting down measurements (wealso created a math course), parentassociation boards are keeping min-utes of meetings, parents are checkingtheir children’s notebooks to makesure their children are being diligentin school.

While this approach to curriculummay not be my favorite — subjectrather than learner focused, work-book-based rather than authentic —the curriculum, materials, and meth-ods respond to the conditions inwhich they are used and to theresources of those who use them. In addition, the content of thecurriculum is just what the learnerswant. Many of them are members of parent association boards. Theirpleas for a literacy course that wouldenable them to do their jobs as par-ent association members were whatcaused us to create the course in thefirst place.

About the AuthorBarbara Garner is the editor of Focus on Basics and a co-editor of NCSALL’sAnnual Review of Adult learning andLiteracy. A former ABE and ESOLteacher, teacher trainer, and materialsdevelopment specialist, she is also respon-sible for World Education’s literacy workin Africa. ❖

Over the past decade, asa teacher of beginninglevel adult basic edu-

cation (ABE), I rarely had asemester in which I didn’t feelfrustrated. The students justweren’t “getting it.” I work for the College of Lake County(CLC) in Grayslake, Illinois,and for the Waukegan PublicLibrary Literacy program’sAdult Learning Connection(ALC). Adult Learning Con-nection is a coalition of theWaukegan Public Library, CLC,and the Literacy Volunteers ofLake County. For years, CLC’sABE classes followed a verygeneral curriculum. CLCdeveloped a loosely organizedset of competencies in 1995,but never turned them into afull curriculum. We teacherswere free to be as creative as we wanted, with minimalguidance as to specific materialsor methodologies. We used thebest methods available to us,but we all had high drop outrates and saw little measurablestudent progress, especially withlearners who tested into our be-ginning level (0.0 to 3.9 gradelevel equivalent on the Test ofAdult Basic Education [TABE]).We wanted to address the dropout rate and find a more effec-tive way to serve beginninglevel reading students.

Teachers were not the only onesfeeling frustrated. The ALC-trainedvolunteer tutors, who worked one onone with students or in classrooms,expressed concern that their studentswere not progressing quickly enough.The literacy program staff decided tostart looking for ways to improve,thereby embarking on a reflectiveprocess in which we are still engaged.

Learning from OthersWe started, about eight years ago,

by talking to people who seemed tosucceed where we were failing. At theIllinois New Readers for New Life con-ference, we connected with studentsfrom other programs who had successin learning to read. We participated in electronic discussion lists on theInternet and began networking withother programs. An awareness of whatwe might be missing began to grow.We met John Corcoran, author of TheTeacher Who Couldn’t Read, on a guestauthor visit at the Waukegan PublicLibrary. John overcame his decades-long struggle to become a reader usingthe techniques featured in the WilsonReading System methodologies and theLindamood-Bell Learning Processes.He attended our annual tutor con-ference as a guest, and directed us toMeg Schofield, of the Chula VistaPublic Library in California. Meg is aliteracy practitioner who was trainedin both the Wilson Reading Systemand the Lindamood-Bell LearningProcesses. She has effectively trans-lated both those systems into herpractice with adults who have lowliteracy levels. Another former lit-eracy student who has become anactivist in the field of adult literacy,Archie Willard, also pointed us

Not By Curriculum AloneThis ABE program found that the class scheduleneeded to change to support curriculum changesby Mary Lynn Carver

Focus onBasics


towards the Wilson Reading Systemwhen we met at a conference laterthat year.

ALC staff began to read the workof Dr. Reid Lyon, Chief of the ChildDevelopment and Behavior Branch ofthe National Institute of Child Healthand Human Development. In a 1997address before Congress, Dr. Lyonstated: “What our NICHD researchhas taught us is that in order for abeginning reader to learn how toconnect or translate printed symbols(letters and letter patterns)into sound, the would-bereader must understand thatour speech can be segmentedor broken into small sounds(phoneme awareness) andthat the segmented units ofspeech can be represented byprinted forms (phonics). Thisunderstanding that writtenspellings systematically rep-resent the phonemes ofspoken words (termed thealphabetic principle) is ab-solutely necessary for thedevelopment of accurate and rapidword reading skills.” Since hisresearch focuses on how a beginningreader acquires the reading process,we wondered if it would apply toadults. In 1995, the research on howadults learn to read was sparse at best,so we were exploring new territorywhen it came to what might work for them. The research on childrenprovided a glimpse into what wewanted, but it wasn’t enough.

We asked our students: “What do you think we aren’t doing?” Ascoassessors of their learning, theyknew what they didn’t know, whichwas how to “figure out words right.”As we learned more about the sub-skills of reading and specific techniquesfor teaching those with learningdisabilities, we began to understandwhat they meant. Financed by a com-bination of personal, grant-funded,and volunteer donations, various staffmembers participated in such trainingopportunities as attending sessions on the Orton-Gillingham method, a

phonemics-based program; partici-pating in an overview of the WilsonReading System, a multisensory,phonemics-based program organizedaround the six syllable types; andspending two weeks in California at atraining on the Lindamood-Bell system,useful for helping students acquire anawareness of individual sounds in words.

Over the years, staff turned tothe National Institute for Literacy’sweb site (www.nifl.gov) for reliableresources on reading research; we also

scoured professional reading andlearning disability journals such as theJournal of Reading and Journal of Ado-lescent & Adult Literacy. We looked atinformation provided by Equipped forthe Future and NCSALL’s Focus onBasics. One staff member participatedin the “Bridges to Practice” trainingoffered by the National Adult Lit-eracy and Learning Disabilities Center,which covered assessment of learningdisabilities, planning, teaching, andfundamentals of the teaching andlearning process.

Changes BeginIn 1997, the ALC offered experi-

enced tutors two 2-day seminars withMeg Schofield. She came to Illinoisfrom California in the middle of aChicago winter to share her expertiseon specific strategies to incorporatephonemic awareness into our teaching.Four of our literacy program staff arealso employed by the college to teachthe beginning level ABE classes. This

creates consistency between the twoorganizations and also coordinatesmuch of what the ALC does with the CLC ABE program. About 20volunteer tutors and two or threeCLC ABE teachers who taught thelowest-level ABE classes and ALCstaff attended the sessions. Our goalwas to pull together everything wehad learned to this point and effec-tively revise our program so that wecould move students from one-on-onetutoring sessions into our ABE classes.

We wanted the learners to beable to transition smoothly andhave consistency between theliteracy program methods andthe techniques used in theclasses. At that time, we werelooking at phonemic awarenessas an additional tool to use inthe classes. The reaction ofthe tutors to the training waspositive and their enthusiasmand conviction that this was the missing piece of ourinstruction helped the learnersaccept the “new” methods we

started to incorporate. Two or three years later, we realized

that a curriculum change needed tobe our next step. The ALC tutors andstaff were having success with theirindividual students. It was time toexpand. One of the first changes ALCstaff incorporated was how we thinkabout what we teach (in class and intutor training). Since 1997, we havebeen working to incorporate thedevelopment of phonemic awarenessskills into the beginning reading(lowest) level classes and into thenew tutor training program. Withinput from teachers at each level, weare beginning to implement theseskills into the subsequent (midlevel)classes, another step towards ouroriginal goal of smoothing transitionsfor our learners.

The college agreed that it wasnecessary to update the curriculum forall ABE and General Educational De-velopment (GED) levels. We nowhave three curriculum teams, eachserving two levels of class. Each team

“We started... by talking to people

who seemed tosucceed where

we were failing.”


Focus onBasicsmeets with the teams from the levelsabove and below them to discuss whatskills should be covered at each level,what content is appropriate at eachlevel, and what methods should beused at each level. The ABE cur-riculum teams consist of ALC staffwho are teachers, and two midlevelABE teachers who attended eitherthe Meg Schofield or Wilson Over-view training. They understand theunderlying reasons behind what weare trying to do. The third team is made up of pre-GED and GEDteachers who automatically have amore defined curriculum because ofwhat they teach. By the timestudents reach those GEDclass levels, they should notneed the same focus as lowerABE class levels.

ImplementingChange

Going from being able toteach whatever you want tobecoming structured andconsistent has been a bigchange for teachers and tutors.Many students come inwanting to get their GED and findout that first they must learn to bebetter readers. It is still hard for meas a teacher to say, “You aren’t readyyet, let’s try this step first.” Noteverything has changed, however.Although my approach is morestructured now, I still base my lessonplans on content in which mystudents have expressed interest. First we cover concepts, skills, andvocabulary, and then we apply it tothat day’s material. I get help fromcolleagues: with a small core ofteachers, we find it easy to meet andbrainstorm together, share materialsand techniques, and help each otherto refine ways in which to presentdifferent concepts.

Some learners are reluctant to trythe multisensory techniques we nowuse, and a few students each termdrop out. They often decide to tryagain. If they test back into my class,

I try to persuade them to stay and givethese techniques a try. Other studentstell them that these techniques arethe best things that ever happened to them. The reluctant participantsusually find that this approach tolearning makes sense and providesthem with the skills they need inorder to progress.

Changes toAssessment

Some students come to us throughthe college’s placement testing system,and many are referred to the literacy

program by their local library, via theIllinois Employment and TrainingCenter, or by word of mouth. ALCstaff administer the state-mandatedSlosson Oral Reading Test (SORT).Based on our new knowledge, if astudent seems to struggle with vowelsounds and decoding, we decided toadminister a modified version of theWilson Assessment of Decoding andEncoding (WADE). This gives usan idea if the student understandssound/symbol relationships. If theydo not understand them, we matchthem with a specially trained “QuickStart” tutor, who works to familiarizethem with the alphabetic principle,short vowels, and consonants. Whena student has an understanding ofhow the sound/symbol system works,we match them with another tutor.Our goal is to move them eventuallyinto a beginning-level ABE class. Wefind that students experience the most

success if they come into class awareof the 44+ phonemes, six syllabletypes, and other fundamentals of the Wilson and Lindamood systems.When students leave the beginningreading level, they should havemastered all 44+ phonemes andclosed syllables, and be familiar withthe other syllable types. For somestudents, this may take only eight to16 weeks. For others, who may haveundiagnosed learning differences, itmay take years.

In the next three class levels,(roughly equal to levels 2.0 to 7.4on the TABE), students continue to

master the remaining syllabletypes, prefixes, and suffixes.For students continuing fromthe beginning reading level, itprovides an easier transition;for newer students, it is anintroduction to the concepts.Included in all levels of cur-riculum are strategies forreading, writing, infographicinterpretation, sight words,critical thinking, and com-puter skills. Students applythe phonemic awareness andword structure principles to

reading materials in all class levels.

Delivery SystemChange

The ABE classes offered throughthe college are traditionally 48 or 96classroom hours per semester. Thistranslates to two classes a week, forthree hours each, for eight or 16 weeks,with a five-day gap between weeklyclasses. By the time beginning readinglevel students returned the next week,they had forgotten much of what wascovered. The Lindamood-Bell modelrequires a minimum of two hours a day,for five days a week, for extended periodsof time. A curriculum change wasn’tgoing to be enough; we needed to re-examine our delivery system. Whilewe could never provide the intensityrequired by Lindamood-Bell, we won-dered if a four-morning format wouldimprove our learners’ success rates.

“Going from being able to teach whateveryou want to becoming

structured and consistenthas been a big change for

teachers and tutors.”

Focus onBasics


Beginning in the fall semester of2002, for one beginning reading classsection, the college approved a pilotclass with an intensive format. Wechanged the morning beginningreading level class to a six-week, four-morning per week, two-hour per daysession. Since we still had to workwithin the 48-hour parameters, we re-quested two six-week sessions per sem-ester for a total of 96 instructional hours.

ResultsThese changes seem to have

been successful. The attendance ratesof the students have increased (see

Student Retention graph). The stan-dardized SORT assessments have shownimprovements over the test class’s sixmonth period from September, 2002,to March, 2003 (see Pre/Post testgraph). Aside from quantitativemeasurements, the learners give usfeedback on how well this format isworking for them. Coming every daygives them a feeling of belonging, inaddition to providing repetition andreinforcement of what they arelearning. The work they do in astructured, predictable format helpsthem to build on their own achieve-ments. Their self-confidence has in-creased as evidenced by their writing

and reading. They write about beingmore confident at work, helping theirkids with homework, even volun-teering to read in public. These arestudents with 0.0 to 3.9 reading levels(as measured by the TABE), whohave struggled for decades to hidewhat they didn’t know. They are nowwilling to take more risks with theirlearning, and they decide whattopics we will learn about next.They are truly partners in their owneducational process.

It has not been easy to implementsuch a substantial change. The amountof material we want staff and vol-unteers to know requires significant

Student Retention

10GE 0.0-1.9 (ABE Literacy)

20GE 2.0-3.9 (Beginning ABE)LEVEL

Spring ’02 (2 day/week format) Fall ’02 (4 day/week format)

STU

DEN

T R

ETEN

TIO

N

100.0%

90.0%

80.0%

70.0%

60.0%

50.0%

40.0%

30.0%

20.0%

10.0%

0.0%

This compares attendance information from this class (24 students total) in the Spring Semester to the same class with thefour-day-a-week format in the fall, 2002. While we were using phonemic awareness principles in the two-day class, too muchtime elapsed between sessions and students were not feeling (or testing) progress. By switching to the four-day format, wewere able to provide more intensity and students reported they felt like they were learning more.


Focus onBasicstraining time. Three hours of our pro-gram’s initial tutor training introducesphonemic awareness. Tutors are alsooffered phonemic awareness work-shops as part of a series of monthlytutor in-service training sessions runby ALC staff. Our staff has learnedthat the volunteer tutors need con-tinuing support to facilitate or main-tain confidence and consistency intheir tutoring. Many tutors start outin a classroom with one of the paidinstructors for extra training andpractice, before being confidentenough to work one on one with astudent. We have invested in booksand materials, including sets of theWilson Reading System, magneticjournals, sound cards, and 8 x 11

inch white boards and markers forclassroom use.

Developing a curriculum thatworks is an evolutionary process.Eight years ago, we had no long-rangeplan. ALC was committed to imple-menting a new program componentand, as resources became available,took each subsequent step. We havefound that direct, systematic teachingof phonemic awareness and wordstructure seems to be an essential com-ponent of ABE curriculum. A changein schedule was also important. Weare currently mapping out our newcurriculum. Our final document willprovide the skills, strategies, methods,and materials appropriate for eachlevel of student instruction, and be

the basis for teachers to plan theirlessons. We hope that specific skillsand competencies will be taught usingstudent-generated topics of interest.Even when it is done, we will continueto attend professional developmentevents and adult literacy conferencesand incorporate new information as itbecomes available.

Students have repeatedly remarked,“Why didn’t someone show us this along time ago?” We remind them weare all learning together. A successfulcurriculum is not static. It must keepchanging as we learn new ways topresent information and as we buildon new research findings. Sinceincluding phonemic awareness inevery aspect of my teaching, and since

Test Scores (SORT)

A B C D E F G H I JINDIVIDUAL STUDENTS

Pre-Test Data 8/02 Post-Test Data 4/03

GR

AD

E LE

VEL

EQ

UIV

ALE

NTS

7.06.86.66.46.26.05.85.65.45.25.04.84.64.44.24.03.83.63.43.23.02.82.62.42.22.01.81.61.41.21.00.80.60.40.20.0

Data compares individual students pre/post test scores in one semester of the four-morning per week format.These are results over two semesters for this class only.

Focus onBasics


changing our calendar, I have not feltas frustrated. The students are gettingit. We are all disappointed that theend of term comes so quickly.

ReferencesCorcoran, J., Carlson, C. (1994). The

Teacher Who Couldn’t Read. ColoradoSprings, CO: Focus on the FamilyPublishers.

The National Adult Literacy andLearning Disabilities Center (1999).Bridges to Practice: A Research BasedGuide for Literacy Practitioners ServingAdults with Learning Disabilities.Washington, DC: National Institute forLiteracy. http://www.nifl.gov/lincs

The Orton-Gillingham Program,Academy of Orton-Gillingham, P.O Box234, Amenia, NY 12051-0234.

The Wilson Reading System, WilsonLanguage Training, 175 West Main St.,Millbury, MA 01527-1441; telephone(508) 865-5699; fax (508) 865-9644.http://www.wilsonlanguage.com

LiPS- Phoneme Sequencing Program,Lindamood-Bell San Luis Obispo, 416Higuera Street, San Luis Obispo, CA93401; telephone (800) 233-1819; fax(805) 541-8756 http://www.lblp.com

See Focus on Basics Volume 5A, August,2001, on First Level Learners, for moreinformation on the methods the CLCincorporated into its curricula.

About the AuthorMary Lynn Carver has been a part-timefaculty member at the College of LakeCounty, Grayslake, IL, since 1990. Aftercompleting a Masters in Adult Educationin 2001, she joined the Adult LearningConnection (ALC) as the AssistantLiteracy Coordinator at the WaukeganPublic Library. On the ABE curriculumdevelopment team for CLC, she is on-sitestaff at the Library’s Adult Learning andTechnology Center in Waukegan andoffers monthly tutor training workshopsfor ALC volunteer tutors. ❖

AcknowledgmentThe author offers deepest gratitudeto Paula Phipps and Barbara Babbfor all their information, input, andpatience in the development ofthis article.

NCSALL Reports — studies thatinform policy makers and practi-tioners on up-to-date researchfindings on key topics in the field. Reports #23: The First Five Years:

National Center for the Study of Adult

Learning and Literacy 1996–2001.

(2002) $10

Reports #22a & #22: Connecting

Practitioners and Researchers: An

Evaluation of NCSALL’s Practitioner

Dissemination Research Network.

Smith, C., Bingman, B., Hofer, J., Medina,P. & Practitioner Leaders. (2002) ReportSummary (#22a) $2.50, Full Report(#22) $10

Reports #21: Open to Interpretation:

Multiple Intelligences Theory in Adult

Literacy Education. Findings from the

Adult Multiple Intelligences Study.

Kallenbach, S. & Viens, J. (2002) $10

Reports #20: Documenting Outcomes

for Learners and Their Communities: A

Report on a NCSALL Action Research

Project. Bingman, B. with Ebert, O. &Bell, B. (2002) $5

Reports #19a & #19: Toward a New

Pluralism in ABE/ESOL Classrooms:

Teaching to Multiple “Cultures of

Mind.” Executive Summary. Kegan,R., Broderick, M., Drago-Severson, E.,Helsing, D., Popp, N. & Portnow, K.(2001) Executive Summary (#19a) $5,Research Monograph (#19) $35

Reports #18a & #18: Classroom

Dynamics in Adult Literacy Education.

Beder, H. & Medina, P. (2001) ReportSummary (#18a) $5, Full Report (#18) $10

Reports #17: Affecting Change in the

Literacy Practice of Adult Learners:

Impact of Two Dimensions of Instruc-

tion. Purcell-Gates, V., Degener, S.,Jacobson, E. & Soler, M. (2000) $10

Reports #16: The Devil is in the Details:Evidence from the GED on the Role of

Examination System Details in

Determining Who Passes. Tyler, J.,Murnane, R. & Willett, J. (2000) $5

Reports #15: Cognitive Skills Matter in

the Labor Market, Even for School

Dropouts. Tyler, J., Murnane, R. &Willett, J. (2000) $5

Reports #14: An Overview of Medical

and Public Health Literature Addressing

Literacy Issues: An Annotated Biblio-

graphy. Rudd, R., Colton, T. & Schacht, R.(2000) $5

Reports #13: “I’ve Come A Long Way”:

Learner-Identified Outcomes of Partici-

pation in Adult Literacy Programs.

Bingman, B. & Ebert, O. (2000) $10

Reports #12: Persistence Among Adult

Basic Education Students in Pre-GED

Classes. Comings, J., Parrella, A. &Soricone, L. (1999) $10

Reports #11: Changes in Learners’ Lives

One Year After Enrollment in Literacy

Programs: An Analysis from the

Longitudinal Study of Adult Literacy

Participants in Tennessee. Bingman, B.,Ebert, O. & Smith, M. (1999) $5

Reports #10: The Impact of Welfare

Reform on Adult Literacy Education:

Conference Papers and Themes from

Small Group Sessions. D’Amico, D.,Levenson, A. & White, C. (1999) $5

Reports #9: Findings from a National

Survey of State Directors of Adult

Education. Rudd, R., Zahner, L. & Banh,M. (1999) $5

Reports #8: Adult Educators’ Percep-

tions of Health Issues and Topics in

Adult Basic Education Programs. Rudd,R. & Moeykens, B. (2000) $5

Reports #6: The Outcomes and Impacts

of Adult Literacy Education in the

United States. Beder, H. (1999) $10

Reports #6A: The Outcomes and Impacts

of Adult Literacy Education in the

United States—Appendix A: Abstracts of

Studies Reviewed. Medina, P. (1999) $5

NCSALL Teaching and Training Materials — including StudyCircle Guides, are designed for useby teachers and professional devel-opment staff working in adult basiceducation.How Are We Doing? An Inquiry Guide

for Adult Education Programs.

Bingman, B. with Ebert, O. (2001) $10

Beyond the GED: Making Conscious

Choices About the GED and Your

Future. Lesson Plans and Material for

the GED Classroom. Fass, S. & Garner,B. (2000) $5

NCSALL Study Circle Guide:

Performance Accountability in Adult

Basic Education. (2000) $10

NCSALL Publications

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Focus onBasics

■ NCSALL works to improve thequality of practice in adult basiceducation programs nationwidethrough basic and appliedresearch; by building partnershipsamong researchers, policymakers,and practitioners; and throughdissemination of research results.A joint effort of World Education,the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Portland StateUniversity, Rutgers University,and the Center for LiteracyStudies at The University ofTennessee, NCSALL is funded by the US Department ofEducation’s Office of EducationalResearch and Improvement.

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sites, an ESOL labsite in Portland,OR, and an ABE labsite in NewBrunswick, NJ. The labsites providestable environments in which toconduct research; facilitate closecollaborations between re-searchers and practitioners; allow for systematic innovation,experimentation, and evaluationof promising new instructionalmethods, materials, and tech-nologies; and create knowledgethat increases our understandingof adult learning and literacy andimproves practice. For moreinformation, visit http://www.labschool.pdx.edu and http://ncsall-ru.gse.rutgers.edu

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Focus on Basics, World Education,44 Farnsworth St., Boston, MA02210-1211, or call Caye Caplanat (617) 482-9485. Topicsavailable: • Research• Reading• Multilevel Classrooms• Content-Based Instruction• Learner Motivation• The GED• Change• Project-Based Learning

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ABE/ESOLCurricula on the Web

A good place to start isNIFL’s Web site, LINCS. Itfeatures multimedia curriculadeveloped by practitioners,special collections on majorliteracy topics, the latestliteracy-related research andstatistics, opportunities forcommunicating with col-leagues directly and throughon-line discussion groups, andthe best peer-reviewed ABEand ESOL literacy sites in theUnited States and beyond.http://www.nifl. gov/lincs/homepage.html. The Equippedfor the Future (EFF) specialcollection is accessible viaLINCS, or go directly to it:http://www.nifl.gov/ lincs/collections/eff/

With LINCS as a startingpoint, you can also go, viaregional LINCS, to individualstate’s Web sites, many ofwhich have curricula availableto download. Maine’s ABEstaff development center’sWebsite has a report on theirstatewide curriculum develop-ment process, including arubric on what constitutesquality curriculum. http://www.umaine.edu/call/profdev/curriculumdev.html

Articles onCurriculumDevelopmentPreviouslyPublished in Focus on Basics(all available on the Web viaNCSALL’s Web site, http://ncsall.gse.harvard.edu)

Multicultural EducationConnecting Theory to PracticeAllison Cumming-McCann(Volume 6, Issue B, February 2003)

YES! A Literacy Program’s Antiracist JourneyMargery Freeman & Lou Johnson(Volume 6, Issue B, February 2003)

Struggles: Writing as HealingLeslie Ridgway & Dale Griffith(Volume 5, Issue C, February 2002)

ESOL Teachers: Helpers in Health CareKate Singleton(Volume 5, Issue C, February 2002)

Teaching ESOL Using WordProcessing: A CommunicativeApproachSteve Quann & Diana Satin(Volume 4, Issue C, December 2000)

Beginning Math for Beginning ReadersLinda Huntington(Volume 4, Issue B, September 2000)

Developing Adults’ Numerate ThinkingMary Jane Schmitt(Volume 4, Issue B, September 2000)


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Reversing Reading Failure in Young Adults Mary E. Curtis and Ann Marie Longo (Volume 1, Issue B, May 1997)

Developing Materials and Curriculum Char Ullman and Aliza Becker (Volume 1, Issue D, December1997)

AdditionalResources on ESOL andCurriculum by Heide Wrigley

Wrigley, H. (1993). “One sizedoes not fit all: Educationalperspectives and programpractices in the U.S.” TESOLQuarterly, Vol. 27, No. 3,Autumn, 49-465.

Wrigley, H. (2004, in press).“We are the world: Servinglanguage minority adults infamily literacy programs.” InWasik, B.H. (ed.), Handbook on Family Literacy: Research and Services. Mawhaw, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Spruck, H. & Guth, G. (1992)Bringing Literacy to Life: Issuesand Options in Adult ESLLiteracy. San Mateo, CA:Aguirre International.

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NCSALL ProfessionalDevelopment OpportunitiesConnect research to practice by conductingstudy circles with your colleagues or staff.NCSALL uses the term “study circle” todescribe a group of colleagues who read a setof materials on an issue and meet severaltimes to talk about that issue, with the goal

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New NCSALL StudyCircles GuidesNCSALL has published three new Study Cir-cle Guides. Please visit the NCSALL websiteat http://ncsall.gse.harvard.edu (see Teachingand Training Materials section) to downloadthese publications for free or to order printed,bound copies.

Learner Persistence in Adult Basic EducationThis NCSALL Study Circle addresses learnerpersistence, motivation, and retention inadult basic education. It includes findings ofNCSALL’s research on learner persistenceand articles on practice from Focus on Basics.

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Teaching and Learning in Authentic ContextsThis NCSALL Study Circle is based onresearch conducted by a team led by VictoriaPurcell-Gates. Their research examines therelationships between two dimensions ofliteracy instruction (the degree of authen-ticity of activities and texts and the degree ofstudent/teacher collaboration) and changes inthe literacy practices of students outside theclassroom.

NCSALL ReportsLiving with it: Federal Policy Implementation in Adult Basic Education. The Cases of theWorkforce Investment Act and Welfare Reform,by Alisa Belzer.

The author gathered data from six statesthrough in-depth interviews on practitioners'perceptions of how WIA and welfare reformchanged their practices. The data providehypotheses that can be explored throughanalysis of other data now available from theNational Reporting System (NRS). Thereport also provide insights that will behelpful to policy makers.

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