Workforce Development and Literacy in New Zealand and the U.S.A.

A Forum — April 20, 2001

After graduating from high school, many New Zealanders who can afford to do so undertake an adventure that they call "the big OE," which is short for "Overseas Experience." Though many American students make a similar trip, the "OE" is all the more important for New Zealanders, who live in one of the most beautiful, but also one of the most geographically isolated nations in the world. The policy world can seem similarly isolated, and as valuable as it might be, it is rare for policymakers to venture forth on an "OE." As an Ian Axford fellow, Alice Johnson, a Senior Analyst at the National Institute of Literacy, received just such a rare opportunity to spend the last year on an "OE" in New Zealand. Johnson’s trip was not a blur of backpacking, hostels, and long nights in pubs with Australians and New Zealanders; it was a fruitful research trip that resulted in several comparative case studies of innovative workforce development and adult literacy programs in the South Pacific island nation. At the request of the American Youth Policy Forum, Johnson spoke at a forum on Capitol Hill where she presented her case studies and insights on the comparative nature of literacy and workforce development in the United States and New Zealand.

Johnson began with a brief overview of New Zealand society, politics, and race relations. For those whose lives are squeezed into the over-crowded beltway area, it may have been surprising and heartening to learn that sparsely populated New Zealand has twenty sheep to every one citizen. For a country roughly the size of California, New Zealand has a population of South Carolina and a ruggedly beautiful physical geography that Johnson described as "one giant national park." Though not as multicultural as the United States, New Zealand is demographically diverse, with approximately 20 percent of the population originally descended from Pacific Island stock (12 percent Maori and another 6 percent from islands that include Samoa, Fiji, and Tonga) and the remaining majority descending primarily from European stock. The largest group of Pacific Islanders are called "Maori." Because they migrated to New Zealand over 1,000 years ago they are often considered New Zealand’s indigenous people. Wearing a Maori necklace and sprinkling her presentation with Maori words and phrases, Johnson clearly was intrigued by and enamored with the native culture of New Zealand. This attempt to understand both majority and minority cultures in New Zealand deepened Johnson’s case studies of workforce and literacy development sites in New Zealand.

Before outlining the findings from her case studies, Johnson discussed standard American definitions and measures of adult literacy. The National Institute for Literacy defines literacy as: "The ability to understand and employ printed information in daily activities, at home, at work, and in the community, to achieve one’s goals and to develop one’s knowledge and potential." In other words, it is the ability to use reading as a functional tool in everyday life. To capture the spectrum of adult reading and comprehension skills, the National Adult Literacy Survey measures functional adult literacy along an ability scale from Levels 1-5. An adult with Level 1 literacy can sign their name and total a bank statement, but they cannot locate an intersection on a street map, identify two pieces of information in a sports article, or calculate the total cost of purchases from an order form.

The adult literacy programs that Johnson has worked with in the US and studied in New Zealand deal primarily with students who are at Level 1 (approximately 20% of the population in each country), but these students face different obstacles to attaining functional literacy. Adult education classes might include a 65 year-old man who dropped out of school and worked as a laborer but now wants to read to his grandchildren, a 25 year-old immigrant who reads well in her native language but needs help with English, or a teen parent who dropped out of school after the eighth grade and is now working toward her GED. Given the range of student experience and skill levels, adult literacy programs must draw from a quiver of different strategies to address individual students’ needs. Through interviews with administrators, teachers, and students, Johnson found a variety of lessons and successful strategies in her New Zealand case studies that are transferable to US literacy policy and programming.

The first case study Johnson outlined in her presentation focused on a small, but exemplary literacy program at Christchurch Polytechnic (CP), a New Zealand community college. Several factors contribute to the success of the CP adult literacy program – known as "Training Opportunities." First, it offers a "safe" atmosphere where adults can work on literacy without social stigma. One reason for this is the location on a community college campus, an academic environment in which adult learning traditionally occurs. Other important benefits of this setting included adult learners’ access to all of the campus resources (library, cafeteria, etc.) and the ease with which they can transition to polytechnic courses upon completing the training opportunities program. The high number of well-qualified, paid staff also ensure program success. Johnson noted that the ratio of paid to volunteer staff at CP is much higher than many of the American programs where she has taught, and the CP teachers are well-trained with a high percentage having master’s degrees in education. Finally, the curriculum is based on topics of interest to the students and it is culturally sensitive to the needs of minority students, integrating Maori concepts of holistic learning into classroom pedagogy.

Johnson’s second case study concentrated on a literacy and workforce development program run by the Tasman Pulp and Paper Mill Company. Streamlining in an effort to integrate new technology, the paper mill phased out the position of shift foreman, requiring more workers to write reports and work with computer technology. Because several of the workers had Level 1 literacy, the company collaborated with a unique workplace literacy nonprofit, Workbase, to create a program called Te Whare Ako or "the House of Learning." Te Whare Ako asked for adult learners’ input and acted upon student recommendations, such as dealing with the problem of social stigma by bringing instructors in from Auckland (several hours away) at the request of students who did not want rumors flying around town about their need for "remedial" reading classes. The contextualized curriculum uses real reports from the mill to teach literacy, helping the workers become more productive almost immediately and also encouraging the learning process by revealing the practical applicability of literacy. The location at the work site is convenient and support from the management in terms of time, interest, and materials also proves crucial to the program’s success. Finally, Te Whare Ako connects workers to higher level skills and has evolved into a "one-stop" professional development program that teaches both basic literacy and computer technology courses, and refers employees to other programs for additional education and training.

The motivation, barriers, and benefits to participation in literacy programs in New Zealand are similar to the factors that contribute to the success of these programs in the United States. Students in New Zealand’s adult literacy programs told Johnson that they were motivated to join the programs to learn computer skills, get a job or a promotion, and to help them read to their children. The prominence of this last factor as a benefit mentioned by students surprised Johnson, who found that "the real impact of these workplace [literacy] programs was on the family." Employers were happy to see such side benefits for workers, but they funded the programs primarily because they boosted workplace efficiency and profits. The barriers to program participation were fear of social stigma and long waiting lists for voluntary programs. In visiting less successful workplace literacy programs, Johnson also found that mandatory enrollment served as a negative incentive for student participation. For the employers, the cost and the feeling that it was not "their role" to teach literacy were barriers to program implementation. Yet the benefits of better safety records, more staff productivity and loyalty, improved use of technology, and better management-employee relations outweighed these obstacles in the successful program sites that Johnson visited.

Johnson concluded her presentation with policy recommendations aimed at transferring the best practices that she observed in high quality New Zealand literacy programs to the United States. She cited the inclusion of literacy programming in the Workforce Investment Act as an excellent start, but she encouraged policymakers and legislative staffers to think more broadly about how support for literacy could be integrated into future legislation and policy measures such as welfare-to-work and higher education reform. Johnson’s recommendations included:

• Fostering collaboration between literacy programs and other education providers (e.g. community colleges and universities)
• Creating a true national literacy system comparable to K-12 or higher education that includes community, family, and workplace literacy
• Providing high-quality professional development for literacy staff
• Increasing the number of paid staffers and using trained volunteers in appropriate roles
• Improving program accountability by including standards and widely-accepted assessment tools for literacy programs

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