Literacy, the social practices approach and community based learning

1. Literacy, the social practices approach and community based learning Lyn Tett, Universities of Huddersfield and Edinburgh, UK

2. The literacy ladder People are ranked from bottom to top with the emphasis on what they can’t do rather than what they can. This leads to a deficit model where those on the bottom rungs are positioned as lacking the skills that they need.

3. COGNITIVE EMOTIONAL Supporting learning SOCIAL Community and Society From Illeris, K (2004) ‘The three dimensions of learning’ NIACE

4. A social practice approach to learning learning as belonging community learning as doing Learning identity practice learning as becoming meaning learning as experience From Etienne Wenger (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge University Press

5. Social Practices Approach • The purpose of learning is to read, write and use numbers in order to handle information, express ideas and opinions, make decisions and solve problems, as family members, workers, citizens and lifelong learners. • What is to be learned is based on the key life areas and social contexts in which literacy and numeracy are used. • The focus is on the skills, knowledge and understanding that enable people to do what they want in their private, family, community and working lives.

6. Literacy & community • Literacy is always employed for a purpose - such as making decisions or solving problems - and in a particular context. • Literacy is more than an individual skill, it is a communal resource, integral to the social actions, relationships and institutions within which it is used and developed. • It therefore helps people living in a variety of communities to define and take action on the issues that affect them and needs to be placed in the wider context of social justice and human rights.

7. The Curriculum Framework Wheel

8. Building knowledge and understanding Create a curriculum that assumes that people are knowledge rich and base it on their life situations; Regard adults as key partners whose views are recognised as relevant and taken seriously; Prioritize working together rather than individualism; Enable people to fulfill their social and personal, as well as their economic needs.

9. Assessing progress • Learning is assessed through the distance that learners have travelled in reaching their own goals rather than pre-set tests. • The focus on learners identifying their own goals lends itself to processes of formative assessment that in turn leads to setting new goals in a virtuous cycle of achievement. • Learning goals are recorded in Individual Learning Plans owned by the learners that records progression towards the goals that the learner identified at the beginning of their programme.

10. Family literacy • Flexible curriculum that responds to the learners and gives them both choice and challenge • Group work that builds a positive learner identity • Positive tutor-student & student-student relationships • A sense of shared experiences and values amongst participants

11. Examples of positive outcomes • ‘I am now able to help my children with their homework and that means we are happier together as a family as I’m not so worried about not understanding how they learn to read’. • ‘I have got a job as a gardener now that I can read and write better and this has always been my goal’. • ‘I am now the Trade Union representative at work and doing this course has helped me to give advice to other staff’. • ‘Learning makes you feel better about yourself you know. Now that I know I can learn I want to go on and do more and so I have now enrolled for a computing course at my local college’.

12. Conclusion • This approach to learning and developing the curriculum is about changing the assumptions about what it means to learn and how it is assessed. • It challenges individually-based, deficit views of learners and instead focuses on their ability to do what they want in their lives. • Participating in learning has a positive effect on individuals and communities but the structures must be in place to provide the necessary resources of money, time and emotional support for this to take place.