Chapter 9

Functional Context Education Case Study #3:
An Integrated Basic Skills and Electronic Technician's Course

Scenario: ARC'S Inc. redesigns its Electronics training program to integrate technical and basic skills training.

At the Gibson Paper Company, Carmen Lopez met Helen Jones. M. Jones worked in the copy center. There she made copies and occasionally performed maintenance and minor repairs on the photocopy equipment. She liked this kind of repair work. She talked with Cannen Lopez and told her about how she would like to get into electronics technician's training someday. M. Lopez told M. Jones about ABC'S Inc. and how it offered training in electronics work.

So one Monday that she had off, M. Jones went to ABC'S Inc. and talked with them about possibly getting into their Electronics training program. The in-take advisor asked M. Jones to take some basic skills tests. The Electronics program required 9th grade reading and mathematics skills for enrollment.

However, M. Jones scored at the 7th grade level in basic skills. She was given the option of entering the basic skills program, where she could study the GOALS materials for preparing people to enter Electronics technician's training. But M. Jones did not want to spend the extra lime in the basic skills program. She told the ABC'S Inc. counselors that she would brush-up her basic skills on her own and come back someday.

Their experience with M. Jones lead the ABC'S Inc. staff to wonder why the Electronics program required 9th grade basic skills. After studying the program, they found that it was highly theoretical and abstract The text for the course was written at the 11th grade level, and there was little emphasis upon learning in a developmental sequence from enactive, to iconic, to symbolic modes of learning.

The ABC'S Inc. staff decided to find out if there were other approaches to Electronics training that did not require such a high entry level of basic skills. Their search led them to a prototype Electronics course that had been developed in research sponsored by the Ford Foundation. The prototype course followed similar concepts and principles as used in the GOALS program. The difference was that the GOALS redesigned basic skills training and incorporated aspects of technical training into the basic skills course. What the Functional Context Education/ Electronics Technician's (FCE/ET) prototype course did was redesign technical training so learners with basic skills at the 5th grade or above could enter directly into technical training. In the context of the technical training, then, their basic reading and mathematics skills were developed.

The Functional Context Training/Electronics Technician's Course

This chapter describes the prototype Electronics Technician's course studied by ABC'S Inc. that was developed based on concepts from functional context theory.^{1, 2} The Functional Context Training/Electronics Technician's (FCT/ET) course was designed to help marginally prepared students to succeed in a full-scale Electronics Technology training program, one in which they might otherwise fail. The FCT/ET course attempts to facilitate learning in three ways.

First, it builds new knowledge on old knowledge by using familiar electrical devices to teach basic electronics principles and equipment analysis procedures.