The Texas Adult Education Content Standards & Benchmarks

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Browsing the Web, TCALL staff found these literacy-related sites
particularly relevant, helpful, or just plain fun.

A Process Guide for Establishing State Adult Education Content Standards.
This guide describes the steps to plan, develop, review, and implement a fully integrated, standards-based education system to improve instruction and increase learner outcomes. It includes an overview of standards-based education, components of standards-based reform, and implications for adult education. Each chapter provides information and examples gathered from research, reviews of standards, and interviews with state adult education staff and standards experts.

CareerOneStop is a U.S. Department of Labor-sponsored Web site that offers career resources and workforce information to job seekers, students, businesses, and workforce professionals to foster talent development in a global economy. One feature of the site is a collection of one-minute video clips showing the types of work people do in nearly 550 careers and videos for the 16 clusters recognized by the Department of Education. Over 300 of the videos are also available in Spanish, and the English language videos also have subtitles. You can find them by doing a Site Search for videos. During August 2007, members of the NIFL Workplace Literacy listserv discussed ways to use the video clips with students. If you’re interested in seeing the summary of that discussion, call TCALL (800-441-READ) and ask for Professional Development Specialist Ken Appelt.

Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching, and Technology.
Michael Orey of the University of Georgia has created an excellent site for everyone studying or practicing in the field of education. There are articles on all of the major learning theories and a section on adult learning. The one on “Adult Learning” is a great resource for new teachers to the field (and a good review for the rest of us). The sections included are Learning and Cognitive Theories; Primary Instructional Strategies or Models; Supporting Instructional Strategies or Models; Instructional Strategies or Models for K-12; and Instructional Strategies or Models for Adult Learners. Bloom’s Taxonomy is found in Section 1 Learning and Cognitive Theories. This is the source of the information on Bloom’s Taxonomy that was presented at the Reaching New Standards conference in Austin, June 25-26.

Equipped for the Future (EFF).
Begun in 1994, the National Institute for Literacy’s EFF initiative started the development of a framework for adult learning content standards. These content standards were constructed to strengthen the ability of adult education providers to improve their programs in order to better meet the needs of adult learners and the wider community. Here you will find information on the foundational pieces of the EFF framework including the four purposes for learning, the three role maps, the 13 common activities that overlap the roles, and the 16 EFF Content Standards. The EFF Content Standards are the fundamental tools in facilitating the EFF approach to teaching, learning, & assessing and for program improvement. The standards represent a consensus of what is important for learners to know and be able to do and are linked to the primary purposes that motivate adult learning.

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The National Commission on Adult Literacy (NCAL) is an independent panel of leaders from labor, business, government, education, literacy, and philanthropy - recently unveiled its new website. Formation of NCAL was announced in July 2006 by Dollar General Corporation and the Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy (CAAL). Never before has such an outstanding group of influential Americans come together for such an extended period of time – nearly two years – to consider the future of adult education. The Commission will issue a report on its findings in mid-2008. In the meantime, several preliminary publications are already available on the NCAL Website. They are available in the form of downloadable PDF files, and some can also be purchased from NCAL as bound, full-color versions. Contact TCALL’s Clearinghouse Library (800-441 READ) to find out about some of the longer bound, full-color NCAL publications that are available for loan.

The Process Guide: How Texas Developed its State’s Standards and Benchmarks. Since 2001, a number of adult education practitioners in Texas have been hard at work to develop standards that accurately describe what adult learners should know and be able to do and benchmarks that describe how well learners need to be able to demonstrate levels of proficiency. An initial endeavor was to adopt and implement Florida’s Department of Education Adult Basic Education Curriculum Standards. This endeavor yielded the Texas Standardized Curriculum Framework (TSCF). In early 2004, Texas LEARNS, the administrative oversight of Texas’ adult education programs, funded TCALL at Texas A&M University to gauge the adoption and implementation efforts of the TSCF across Texas and convene a taskforce meeting to assess the TSCF in its current form and recommend future directions for Texas LEARNS as they considered adopting standards statewide. TCALL, in turn, formed the Texas Adult Education Standards Project (TAESP) and assigned staff members to the project to accomplish the charges set forth by Texas LEARNS.