Description
This research investigates the way that employers and their apprentices and trainees perceive how English language and literacy skills impact on their learning and performance in the workplace in the current context of new apprenticeships. The research was based on a survey to a sample of Queensland employers and their appentices and trainees as well as case studies interviews across three States. The research found that employers were less positive about their employees' English language and literacy skills than the employees themselves but both groups identified the same skills as in need of improvement. These included using computers, spelling and punctuating writing, writing legibly and interpreting graphical information. While employers were generally happy with the way their appentices and trainees communicated with colleagues and worked to achieve a team goal, interpersonal communication skills to deal with more demanding situations emerged as an area requiring more development.
Summary
Executive summary
The New Apprenticeship system has emerged over the past two years in the context of substantial change in both vocational education and the workplace. There has been a significant increase in uptake of apprenticeships and traineeships, and apprentices and trainees are now likely to have completed more than the traditionally required ten years of schooling. There has also been an increase in the number of school-based apprenticeships and opportunity for existing employees to undertake apprenticeships and traineeships as well as opportunity for greater flexibility in delivery of training.
Changes have also occurred in the workplace in terms of use of computers, technology and media, along with changes in the nature of work, to the extent that it may be argued today's apprentices and trainees may be facing new challenges in terms of English language and literacy (ELL) skills in the workplace. This research set out to investigate the way employers and their apprentices and trainees perceive the way these employees' ELL skills impact on their learning and performance in the workplace in the current context of New Apprenticeships.
Research activity
The research design and methodology involved an opinion survey to a stratified random sample of Queensland business employers and their apprentices and trainees, and case study interviews conducted in a range of industries across three States. The research was conducted in three main stages: literature review, consultation and survey item development, trial and administration of the survey and site visits.
Findings
The investigation revealed a complex situation in terms of both policy and practice. Employers were significantly less positive about their employees' ELL skills than the employees themselves, but both groups identified the same skills as in need of improvement. Issues and trends related to differences between employers' and employees' opinion, the importance of, and approaches to, teaching functional literacy skills, debate on the differences between ELL-skill demands for the job compared with those required for learning, differences in on-the-job demands across industries, recruitment, transition into the job and mentoring. Areas for skills clarification and improvement were identified along with issues related to the impact of technological and workplace change and implications for skills related to the concept of lifelong learning.
The importance of ELL skills
Apprentices and trainees perceived their ELL skills as quite adequate for their workplace learning and performance. Employers were much more critical in terms of apprentices' and trainees' ability to communicate effectively in the workplace and their functional literacy skills. Perceptions of the adequacy of apprentices' and trainees' ELL skills differed between employers in different industry areas. However, employers of apprentices were consistently more positive about these employees' ELL skills. The apprentices in the sample had higher educational entry levels than the trainee group but the age range for trainees was greater.
The results of the research clearly show that employers place great emphasis on apprentices and trainees having adequate ELL skills in conjunction with a range of other organisational skills, knowledge of business operations, as well as attitudinal-related qualities they perceive as influencing workplace performance. From the employer perspective, ELL skills are associated firstly with the physical evidence resulting from workplace literacy-related tasks, including written job applications. Apprentices' and trainees' ELL skills were viewed as having a profound influence on workplace performance as well as learning. It was the general view that written texts, composed by employees primarily for an audience in the public arena, should be presentable in terms of legibility if hand written, accuracy of spelling and punctuation, sentence structure and meaning.
Apprentices and trainees, on the other hand, were very confident of their ELL skills and tended to emphasise their ability to actually carry out the work as being the best evidence of their skills. Both the employers and employees agreed that the ELL skills which were least adequate related to using computers as required, spelling and punctuating writing, writing legibly and interpreting graphical information. The need to develop employees' understanding of how business works and relates to providing quality customer service was also seen as making an important contribution to workplace learning and performance by employers. While employers were generally happy with the way their apprentices and trainees communicated with colleagues and worked to achieve a team goal, interpersonal communication skills to deal with more demanding situations emerged as an area requiring development.
Functional literacy skills
The inadequacy of functional literacy skills was a major issue for employers. Producing high quality documents was viewed as essential to successful business operations. Poorly written documents were seen as impacting on business in two ways. First, poor handwriting, inaccurate spelling and inadequate sentence construction were seen as detracting from the business' image which the employer wished to project to the public. Second, the resulting lack of clarity of meaning had the potential to expose businesses to unnecessary risks in terms of complaints about the work involved, including the risk of litigation. Similarly, where work related to reading information to carry out the work, such as accurately fulfilling requests for goods, errors in reading comprehension also had the potential to cost the business extra money because goods had to be returned and replaced. From the employer perspective, employees were seen as needing to pay attention to, and demonstrate, adequate ELL skills, along with a range of other skills and knowledge to carry out the work, progress in the job and follow a career path.
The teaching of ELL skills is largely seen as the responsibility of those with specific expertise in the area, although training is expected to accommodate a wide range of learner backgrounds and skills. Current policy and approaches to training integrate ELL skills into training packages. Integration is expected to ensure that ELL skills are addressed in the context of the workplace, since they go hand-in-hand with the various units of competence which rely upon these skills. However, the degree to which ELL skills are made explicit in training packages may vary in accord with different writers and the different literacy profiles of different jobs across industries. Delivery may also vary depending on the mode and the ability of the trainer to cater for a range of student backgrounds. However, there are many resources to assist with developing ELL skills, and specialist assistance is available to apprentices and trainees.
Guidelines in Queensland (DETIR 2000) focus on assessing apprentices' and trainees' needs in this area so that training programs can build on and develop existing skills and appropriate assistance or intervention can be provided or advised as necessary. Research on developing ELL skills in vocational education and training (VET) cautions against identifying employees out for separate tuition because of the danger of stigmatisation. Employees who are perceived as requiring development of these skills are likely to be discounted as likely candidates for future promotion. As a consequence, employees may feel inadequate and suffer low self-esteem. Additionally, other less overtly demonstrable, valuable skills which an employee has to offer may be overshadowed by perceptions created by the prominence of poor handwriting, punctuation, spelling and grammar.
ELL skills for work and for learning
Apprentices' and trainees' readiness to accommodate the ELL demands of the workplace also emerged as an important factor. The extent to which school ELL skills provide a foundation for the demands of the workplace in terms of performance and learning is not clear. Although employers clearly expect schools to prepare students for work in terms of literacy and numeracy, there may be poor transfer of skills developed at school to those required in the workplace (Prince 1992). This is reinforced by other research which has shown school literacy involves 'reading to learn' compared with workplace literacy focussing on 'reading to do' (Diehl & Mikulecky 1980; Baylis, Caldwell & Nussbaum 1991). However, from the perspective of employers and employees there seems to be little distinction, and literacy skills continue to be associated with reading and writing regardless of purpose. Thus, if employers and employees, trainers and policy-makers are to be aiming for a common goal then it seems these skill demands and the demands of learning need to be reviewed to make visible the skills' development pathway from school to work and lifelong learning. There is also a need to review these skills in the light of the demands of technology and the concept of a knowledge-based economy in the 'new world of work'.
The trend in training is to ensure that the ELL skills demanded by the training experiences do not exceed those of the job (DETIR 2000). This raises the issue as to how feasible it is for employees, in jobs which have limited ELL demands, to embark on a training pathway which does not demand higher level ELL skills or additional ELL skills. There is a dilemma in terms of how one may acquire new knowledge or develop learning-how-to-learn skills when starting from very limited ELL skills. Again, variation in ELL-skill demands across jobs in different industry categories - such as clerical workers, foundry and engineering workers and hairdressing - are substantial. Since employers of trainee clerical workers were much more positive about these employees' functional literacy skills compared with employers in other industries suggests the level of ELL skills demanded by the job may influence workers ELL-skills development and maintenance. The visibility of written texts makes skills associated with writing more prominent, but the need for effective oral communications skills and interpersonal skills is also at the core of workplace communications, both internal and external, and should not be underestimated. The ability to communicate effectively with supervisors, colleagues and customers and work in a team is an important part of work which relates to English language skills. The challenge for the trainer is to assess workplace tasks in terms of the underlying ELL skills and provide an inclusive curriculum which caters for the ELL-skill needs and gaps.
ELL skills and training-related outcomes
Completion rates in VET suggest that apprentices' and trainees' ELL skills for study are at least as good as the general population in VET or better, since these employees attain the same level of completion but study more course modules more intensively. The fact that these units are generally at Certificate III level for most apprentices and trainees also provides an indication of the underlying ELL-skill demands for learning.
Training programs generally expect apprentices and trainees to have 'basic ELL skills' to engage with the program, although composing written texts may comprise only a small part of the overall work in some industries or have very limited application - for example, take a short telephone message. It appears that while the ideal in training is to deliver a program which does not require ELL skills at a level beyond those required on the job, this issue is debatable. First, since almost half the workforce work at the operational level and most VET enrolments are at Certificate III level then it is quite likely that training will involve some ELL skills not used in the workplace. Second, training is likely to involve at least some acquisition of knowledge over a set time frame and, in some cases, use of distance education materials and multimedia, thus supporting the argument that ELL skills for training are likely to be more demanding than the workplace. Third, if the employee is to aspire to the path of lifelong learning then this assumes ongoing development or possession of ELL skills to 'learn how to learn', including information literacy skills, research skills and critical-thinking skills and an attitude to learning to make this choice of pathway accessible.
Employment of new apprentices
Employers tended to see the recruitment and selection process as ensuring their apprentices and trainees had adequate ELL skills. Job application presentation and written text were seen as providing some evidence of applicants' literacy skills. However, this apparently did not necessarily ensure the selected employee subsequently met their needs. Criticism of employees' functional literacy skills appeared to be intertwined with perceptions of their attitude to work and level of maturity. When it came to considering employees for advancement, employers were influenced by their apprentices' and trainees' attitude to the job, the adequacy of their ELL skills, particularly functional literacy skills, and their ability to get along with customers and colleagues.
From the apprentices' perspective, there was a request for the apprenticeship program to follow a very strong mentoring process with emphasis on expert demonstration, guided practice and scaffolding support until independence was achieved. It was seen as important for the mentor to be sympathetic to the on-the-job learning situation and to have the skills to demonstrate and support apprentices' and trainees' learning.
Areas for improvement
Both employers and employees identified use of computers, the ability to write legibly and spell and punctuate writing, and interpret graphical information as areas for improvement. The need for improvement in the area of interpersonal skills underpinning teamwork and communication between employees and customers and supervisors, particularly when there is potential conflict, was also identified.
Adequate ELL skills were also seen as important for employees' career potential. This view was associated with both workplace demands and the ELL skills needed to acquire new knowledge.
While the integration of ELL skills into training packages is sound policy and functional skills are comprehensively described in the National Reporting System (NRS), additional information is required to enable more consistent, effective delivery in keeping with organisational and technological changes occurring in the workplace and employer requirements. The ways ELL skills relate to other skills, and qualities employers identify as important to the job, also need to be addressed in terms of putting ELL skills into practice. There is a lack of a system view or an across-industry view of the scope, range and demands of ELL skills for both workplace performance and learning and in the context of workplace change and lifelong learning.
The need for greater emphasis on a mentoring process was suggested as being the best way to model workplace practices and create a positive learning environment in which ELL skills and other competencies could be developed. This was also seen as assisting employees to understanding business operations and ultimately gain confidence in doing the work.
Workplace change
Organisational and technological changes are seen as increasing literacy skill demands in the workplace (Eubanks 1990; Grover 1990; Doyle 1992; Kirsch & Jungeblut 1992). These demands relate to greater reliance on higher level cognitive skills in the use of technology, as well as greater opportunity to use technology in learning and be information literate. Employers also raised this issue in addition to the need for functional literacy skills. The emergence of needs for skills with technology is also reflected in both employers' and employees' identification of the need for improvements in the use of computers. In the light of the need for acquisition of these skills as well as 'learning how to learn' skills within the context of the 'knowledge based workplace' (Burnheim 1992), it is suggested that there needs to be a reassessment and definition of ELL-skill demands and how they relate to different jobs across different industries.
Recommendations
- The relationship between ELL skills required for the purposes of learning and ELL skills required for performance on the job needs to be clarified such that if learning demands exceed the ELL skills required to do specific work, account may be taken of this by policy-makers, trainers and apprentices and trainees to ensure training addresses both learning and performance.
- Consideration should be given to (a) conducting a comparative analysis of the ELL demands of the major job groups and (b) developing a user-friendly framework which links to the NRS and which may be used as a guide for both training and assessment. This would need to keep faith with the policy of integrating these skills into training yet provide assistance in identifying ELL requirements for learning and performance to ensure a more comprehensive and systematic approach to ELL competency.
- There needs to be a scan of the role and use of computers for both learning and performance on the job and across jobs to clarify the level of uptake of technology in learning and work and the associated ELL demands so that skill gaps can be identified and adjustments made in training accordingly in terms of policy and programs.
- Consideration should be given to the development of a resource which may be used to model the training situation. This should illustrate how to create a positive workplace-learning environment and focus on the role of a mentor, the role of, and development of, interpersonal skills and provision of more intensive training on orienting employees to the notion of the business plan and business operations.
- In view of the changing demands of work and the goal of lifelong learning, there is a need to identify how ELL skills relate to this process of learning and how they may be dealt with in training in the current context of increased access to information, opportunities for total on-the-job delivery of training, increases in school-based apprenticeships and increased opportunities/access to a range of learning modes and resources, including CDROMS and on-line delivery.
- The conduct of longitudinal case studies of apprentices/trainees across a range of industries, comparing those beginning in school-based apprenticeships with those who enter from other educational backgrounds. This would provide valuable comparative information on ELL-skill development for workplace learning and performance and would identify the relationship of these skills to other skill demands, including those related to self-development and lifelong learning.
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