Workplace List members,

Somehow this e-mail from Tom Sticht slipped through my e-mail without my 
taking any action on it.  I just discovered it as an unread message.  As 
you can see, it was sent to me last June!  Tom gives some background on 
Workplace Literacy as a field and offers a monograph to those who would 
like to read more.  I have checked with him, and he does still have a few 
monographs to offer, so please feel free to request them directly from 
him.  His contact information is at the end of the message.  I apologize 
for the slip up.
Donna

Donna JG Brian
Moderator, NIFL Workplace Literacy Discussion List, and
Coordinator/Developer LINCS Workforce Education Special Collection at 
http://worklink.coe.utk.edu/
Center for Literacy Studies at The University of Tennessee
600 Henley Street, Suite 312
Knoxville, TN 37996-4135

865-974-3420 (desk phone) FAX 865-974-3857
djgbrian at utk.edu



>The following may be of interest to the Workplace list members. Tom Sticht

>

>

>June 17, 2005

>

>Reading for Working: A Functional Literacy Anthology:

>Celebrating 30 Years of Workplace and Family Literacy

>

>Tom Sticht

>International Consultant in Adult Education

>

>In 1975,  the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) published

>"Reading for Working: A Functional Literacy Anthology". As editor and

>senior author of most of the chapters in the book, I wrote the preface. It

>started with the statement, "Little did I realize when Dr. Howard H.

>McFann, Director of HumRRO's Western Division in Monterey, called me into

>his office in the fall of 1967, that we would engage in a conversation that

>would extend over the next eight years!"

>

>Now I can add that little did I realize that 30 years following the

>publication of Reading for Working (RfW), I would still be engaged in

>conversations about adult literacy education, only now the conversations

>take place with adult educators and Directors of various organizations in

>several different nations. Interestingly, the conversations deal to a large

>extent with many of the same issues addressed in RfW.

>

>Research Toward Contemporary Workplace Literacy Education

>

>The research and development reported in RfW set the stage for what became

>known as "workplace literacy." For the first time, adult literacy work

>included an extensive body of empirical research to find out just how

>literate adults had to be to perform well in various occupations. The work

>took place within the context of the U. S. Army of the Vietnam era of the

>1960s and continued into the newly implemented Volunteer Army of the 1970s

>and beyond. It expanded from studies to determine how literate personnel

>had to be to work as automobile mechanics, cooks, supply clerks, medical

>corpsmen, etc., to the design of more readable and usable books and

>manuals, and the design, development, and implementation of workplace

>literacy programs at Army recruit training centers across the United

>States.

>

>Following an introductory chapter, the RfW book was divided into three main

>parts. Part 1: Determining Functional Literacy Demands of Jobs included

>five chapters. Chapter 2 in Part 1 introduced the FORCAST (FORd, CAylor,

>STicht) readability formula, the first such formula developed especially

>for determining the reading grade level of difficulty of job technical

>material and easy enough to be calculated by untrained clerks. Chapter 3

>introduced the procedure known today as literacy task analysis and included

>the identification of job-related reading material reported to be used on

>the job by workers, the development of job-related reading task tests made

>out of actual job materials, the correlation of job-related reading with

>general reading tests, and the demonstration that adults low in general

>reading may actually perform one or two  grade levels higher in reading in

>their occupational area.

>

>Chapter 4 of RfW presents what is still the only data I have found showing

>the relationships of adults' reading, listening, and mathematics

>standardized test performance to their job knowledge as measured by paper-

>and-pencil tests, their ability to perform actual hands-on job tasks, such

>as Cooks cooking jelly roles, Automobile Mechanics repairing vehicles,

>etc.,  and Supervisor ratings of job performance.  Data show that reading

>is most highly correlated with paper-and-pencil tests of job knowledge,

>next with actual hands-on job performance, and least correlated with

>supervisor's ratings of proficiency. Few reports of these types of

>empirical, quantitative data can be found in today's research on adult

>literacy demands of work, or any other domain of activity for that matter.

>

>Part II of RfW discusses two approaches to closing the gap between job

>reading demands and the reading skills of personnel when they are below the

>level of demand. One approach works by lowering the reading and usability

>demands by redesigning the books, manuals, etc. that personnel have to use

>on the job and the substitution of learning by listening rather than by

>reading in some training programs. The second approach is to raise the

>literacy skills of personnel by the development of job-related reading

>programs. This work described the Functional Literacy (FLIT) program that

>assessed learning gains using both general reading standardized tests

>normed in grade levels and job-related reading task tests that were also

>standardized and normed in reading grade levels. The FLIT program

>demonstrated empirically that job-related reading programs could make three

>to five times the gains in job-related reading as made by general literacy

>programs, while making as much or more gains in general literacy as general

>literacy programs do.

>

>Research Toward Contemporary Family Literacy Education

>

>Part III of RfW showed data relating parent's education to the achievement

>of reading skills by the parent's children at age 17 or as young adults

>aged 25 to 35. Here I noted that,  "The influence of parental education is

>overwhelming. The higher the educational level of the respondent's parents,

>the better the respondent's reading performance." This was the first

>presentation within the context of adult literacy education of data for

>what later became known as "the intergenerational transfer of literacy"

>from parent's to their children. In turn, this intergenerational transfer

>of literacy concept became the rallying cry for many of those working to

>develop and implement family literacy programs: teach the parents and reach

>the children!

>

>Professional Recognition of the Work Reported in Reading for Working

>

>The influence of the work reported in Reading for Working was well beyond

>anything I thought about at the time. In 1990 Newman & Beverstock noted

>that I had began my work on adult literacy in the 1960s and that "The study

>of workplace literacy stands on the foundation he has laid." The next year,

>in 1991, Kutner, Sherman & Webb stated: "The workplace literacy movement

>evolved directly from Thomas Sticht's analysis of literacy demands in the

>military which found that using job-specific materials improved job

>performance more than using general academic materials....In a functional

>context-oriented program, instructional materials are drawn from actual

>work materials."

>

>In 1997, Shanahan & Neuman identified the work of Paulo Freire and the work

>reported in RfW as the two most influential adult literacy research

>programs in the 30 years prior to their review. After commenting on

>Freire's work, they went on to say, "Another influential study in adult

>literacy is Tom Sticht's work on literacy in work training and job

>performance....He based his approach on a functional-context principle--

>that new knowledge must build on old knowledge, and that literacy

>instruction could be made more meaningful by using real life situations,

>tasks, and materials....This approach has been extended conceptually into

>other functional approaches such as family literacy and health literacy."

>

>Celebrate With A Free Monograph

>

>To celebrate the 30th year following the publication of Reading for

>Working, which is now long out of print, while supplies last I will send to

>those who ask for it a free copy of a 30 page monograph of my Keynote

>Address entitled "Family Literacy: A World Movement" which was distributed

>at UNESCO's World Symposium on Family Literacy. This is a high gloss,

>paperback monograph that includes extensive reviews of research on the

>centrality of adult education to the development goals of nations, with an

>emphasis upon the role that the intergenerational transfer of literacy and

>family literacy programs can play in this development activity. To obtain a

>free copy, just email me at tsticht at aznet.net and provide a "snail mail"

>address to which I can send the monograph.

>

>References

>

>Mark Kutner, Renee Sherman & Lenore Webb (1991, May). A Review of the

>National Workplace Literacy Program. Report prepared for the U.S.

>Department of Education, Washington, DC: Pelavin Associates, pp. 14,22.

>

>Anabel Newman & Caroline Beverstock (1990). Adult Literacy: Contexts &

>Challenges. Newark, DE: International Reading Association, pp. 156-157.

>

>Timothy Shanahan & Susan Neuman (1997). Literacy research that makes a

>difference. Reading Research Quarterly, 32, 202-210.

>

>Thomas G. Sticht (Ed.). (1975). Reading for Working: A Functional Literacy

>Anthology. Alexandria, VA:  Human Resources Research Organization. (note:

>this is now out of print and must be obtained from a library that carries

>it in its collection, such as the library of Congress or a university

>library.)

>

>Thomas G. Sticht

>International Consultant in Adult Education

>2062 Valley View Blvd.

>El Cajon, CA 92019-2059

>Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133

>Email: tsticht at aznet.net