Literacy Basics - Community Literacy of Ontario

Self-Management / Self-Direction

When the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities first released its Working with Learning Outcomes document, it only included two pages of information about this domain. Since then, thanks to funding from the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities as well as from the National Literacy Secretariat a number of organizations have produced manuals and information designed to help literacy practitioners gain a better understanding of this hard-to-quantify yet extremely important component of literacy learning.

Katrina Grieve’s Supporting Learning, Supporting Change is one example of some of the new resources available to literacy practitioners. For more information about this resource and how to order it, please contact the Ontario Literacy Coalition (www.on.literacy.ca).

The difficulty with this domain is that it contains so many “soft skills” which, although important, are not easy to put into levels or to quantify in a meaningful way. However, it is these “soft skills” that make the learning of the “hard skills” included in the other domains possible and meaningful. These are the skills that are essential for success. People who lack these skills will find it difficult to succeed no matter how effectively they read, write or calculate. Although it is difficult, if not impossible to put these skills into levels, it is possible to recognize success markers. Specific achievements are success markers.

The Essential Skills and Workplace Literacy Initiative also incorporates these types of skills.

The self-management/self-direction domain is divided into two component outcomes:

• Become a self-directed learner capable of achieving the best results possible in work and personal life; and
• Set, monitor and revise long and short-term goals.

Features of the first outcome include:

• concentration/memory skills
• personal advocacy and self-motivation skills
• problem-solving skills
• self-assessment/self-reflection skills
• self-confidence building skills
• thinking skills
• time management/organization skills
• understanding of personal learning style
• working with others skills

Features of the second outcome include:

• Setting relevant goals (short- and long-term)
• Planning for achievement of those goals
• Self-evaluation of progress
• Revising goals as necessary

For more information about goal-setting, please refer to the Assessment Module in this series. For more information about self-assessment, please refer to the Assessment module in this series. We will also be developing a complete module to address this important area in more detail – watch for it in Fall 2006!

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