Work Readiness and Work Contextualized Curriculum

Colleagues,

I have just updated the Literacy List's now 14-page web page of annotated links to Work Readiness and Work-contextualized Curriculum. It offers links to three kinds of curriculum websites:

1) Creating Authentic Materials,

2) Work Readiness Curricula, and

3) Work-contextualized English and Basic Skills Curricula.

Have a look, and let me know if you have suggestions of other websites that offer free, good, work readiness curricula or work-contextualized English language or adult basic skills curricula. I would also appreciate your comments about this page, either here or directly to my email address (below). Note, if you have not accessed this webpage before, when you click on the link it will send a request to me to authorize you view the page. Usually I respond within a few hours.

David J. Rosen

djrosen123@gmail.com

 

 

Comments

Thanks T.J. for the alert.

I have just corrected that link in my original post, and here.

Everyone, when you go there, if you have not requested the web page before, your request will come to me to approve. I try to approve all these requests as soon as possible, almost always the same day. Once approved, you will get an email message, and then you should be able to access the web page. When I update it you should still be able to access it without having to be approved again. If you have difficulty, email me and I'll try to help.

I'm very glad to see that lots of people have been requesting this web page.  These resources could be especially helpful in addressing new WIOA Title II regulations and expectations. Although there are many free work-contextualized curricula on this web page, 14 pages of briefly described links already, I would love to find many more. If you know of some that I have not listed, please send me the web addresses and I'll consider adding them.

David J. Rosen

djrosen123@gmail.com

 

David -

This is an excellent resource for the Career Pathways Community!  Thanks for sharing it here.  I'm wondering if you can provide us a general idea of the selection criteria used in curating this list?  It would be great not only for anyone who may have a possible resource to contribute, but also for anyone who is looking to share these resources more widely with stakeholders who want to know something about how this list was vetted.

I look forward to exploring this list myself, and seeing other contributions from members.  If you post something new, please let us know so that we can be sure to check out resources as they are added.

Best,

Mike Cruse

Career Pathways Moderator

michaelcruse74@gmail.com

Hi Mike and others,

Thanks for your great question, Mike.  This is a lightly curated collection, by no means in the same league as the carefully expert-vetted LINCS Resources Collection; it does however include some LINCS resources, resources from a Minnesota collection, a collection from the U.K., and a collection from Ontario, Canada. My selection criteria include:

1) A course or other curriculum, not just a list of course topics/syllabus, or a compelling article or book on how to develop work-contextualized basic skills or work-related English language learning curricula or instructional materials;

2) An (ideally industry-contextualized) work-readiness curriculum, or a curriculum that integrates occupational knowledge and skills with basic skills/ or English language learning;

3) (Ideally) free;

4) Downloadable; and

5) (Ideally) competency-based.

Frankly, there appear to be so few curricula that meet these criteria, especially now when WIOA Integrated Education and Training makes this such a priority, I am hoping that my curation will not only help adult basic skills programs find curricula they can use and adapt, but that this will also demonstrate the great need for a federally-funded initiative that produces new, top-notch free or OER industry-contextualized and CCR standards aligned curricula for adult education basic skills programs and schools to use -- and modify -- to meet their needs.

You will notice that I have included a couple of Massachusetts-based TACCCT grant-funded curricula. I believe that there may be more curricula, from other states that I should include, but I haven't had time to do that research. Perhaps there are members of the Career Pathways CoP who have done that research, or would be willing to do it now,  and can point me -- and others -- to some good national or state collections of industry contextualized work-readiness or basic skills curricula.

I have not tried to evaluate what "work-contextualized" means for each curriculum I have included, and I expect that if I did there would be a lot of variation in how the curricula were developed, but I hope that in most cases company or industry experts were involved in at least the review of the curriculum, if not its development. In any case, an adult basic skills  program using any of these curricula should have it reviewed by local employer partners. This review will almost inevitably lead to revisions of the curriculum to better meet employer and employee needs, which is healthy for any work-contextualized local curriculum and any adult basic skills program that has employment of its students as a goal.

Underlying this and all sections of The Literacy List, is my long-time (since the mid 1980's) volunteer commitment to finding and listing free resources that may be useful to adult basic skills program teachers, curriculum developers and administrators.  I am greatly aided in this effort by adult basic skills teachers, administrators, curriculum developers, professional development experts, program evaluators, researchers, librarians and others who suggest resources that they believe would be useful additions to The Literacy List. I hope those reading this might look at the Work Readiness and Work-contextualized Curriculum web page, and email me examples of curricula to consider adding to it.

David J. Rosen

djrosen123@gmail.com

Colleagues,

I am not sure what to make of this, but in the past couple of days I have received over 100 requests to access the Work Readiness and Work-contextualized Curriculum page of The Literacy List. I have also received a couple of suggestions for additions to the page, and several people have asked if they could invite others to look at it. (If you wish, you can forward this link to any adult basic skills (including ESOL/ESL) practitioner whom you think could benefit: Work Readiness and Work-contextualized Curriculum

A couple of people have asked me for recommendations of proprietary (commercial) curricula. Curriculum links included in the current Literacy List web page are all free. I am considering adding a page of proprietary, (ideally industry-specific) work readiness, and industry-contextualized basic skills curricula.

I would like to hear from teachers and administrators who have proprietary curricula to recommend. If you do, please tell me the population (ESOL/ESL or native speakers of English) and level of students you use it with, and describe the instructional setting (urban/rural, public school/community college/library/CBO, etc. ) and why you recommend it.

Thanks.

David J. Rosen

djrosen123@gmail.com