Workforce Instructors

Resources for Workforce Instructors: Teachers, Tutors, Trainers

Using Adult Learning Principles in Adult Basic and Literacy Education
This ERIC Practice Application Brief describes how adult education principles can be used in adult basic and literacy education (ABLE) programs. Following a discussion of adult education principles, it provides recommendations for practices, based on the principles and literature related to adult basic and literacy education.

"Workplace Literacy" Best Practices
The National Workforce Assistance Collaborative enumerates characteristics shared by the most effective workplace literacy programs.

See also:
Action Learning for Individual and Organizational Development
Context Matters: Teaching and Learning Skills for Work
Contextual Teaching and Learning: Preparing Students for the New Economy
Contextual Teaching, Professional Learning, and Student Experiences: Lessons Learned from Implementation
Task Analysis Strategies and Practices
Workplace Literacy Assessment Tools
TOWES: Test of Workplace Essential Skills
Adult Learning In Groups

Getting There: A Curriculum for People Moving into Employment
This curriculum is intended to assist educators in preparing adult students trying to transition from welfare to work or to further education. Most of the activities are designed to be used with groups and emphasize personal reflection as well as research into job and training opportunities and the practice of job-related skills. Getting There not only incorporates basic academic skills, but it is also designed to help students discover their own needs, skills, and values. The Facilitator's Guide is also available online.

Self-Esteem and Employment
This workshop is available full-text complete with worksheets and instructions for facilitators. The content deals specifically with women in the workplace and how a positive self-esteem can affect job performance.

Steps to Employment
This resource from Ontario is a series of workshop manuals, each of which includes materials for twenty-five hours of orientation, and twenty-five hours of occupation-specific language training, for a complete ten days of full-time instruction. All materials can be downloaded and printed from the site. Manuals are included for eighteen different sectors of occupations, and each manual includes a workbook for participants, notes for instructors, and an implementation guide. Examples of the eighteen sectors are automotive service trades, construction, entrepreneurs, sales occupations, and telecommunications trades and occupations.

Workplace skills for the adult learner: An integrated curriculum
This curriculum, targeted for unemployed or under-employed adults, teaches job readiness, office technology, and academic skills integrated with self-confidence and interpersonal skills.

Vocational English as a Second Language
This 115 page curriculum guide aims to prepare intermediate speakers of English to improve their English language skills while strengthening job, computer, and basic math skills. To find out more about the project for which this curriculum was developed, go to Bridge to Advanced Technological Education and Employment

Job Interviews
This lesson plan demonstrates how basic skills can be taught using almost any topic or theme of interest to the learner. Adaptations for learners at various levels are suggested throughout.

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The United States General Accounting Office (GAO) gives recommendations to Congress about how to give support and guidance to state and local implementers of WIA in a 2001 report, Workforce Investment Act: New Requirements Create Need for More Guidance.

WIA State Plans has links to individual state plans, and One-Stop information can be found through a U.S. Department of Labor page.

Further information is cataloged in LINCS and available through a LINCS materials search. Click on the LINCSearch button at the top left of this page, and search using "Workforce Investment Act."

These additional resources will be of interest to Workforce Instructors

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