Literacy Basics - Community Literacy of Ontario

Introducing Self-Management to Literacy Students

How can we introduce the idea of self-management/self-direction skills to adult literacy students? We certainly don't want to say or imply to people that they don't know how to manage and direct their own lives! We also don't want to confuse people with an assortment of buzzwords that might not mean anything to them. However, we do want to talk about how literacy programming incorporates a group of skills that can have a positive impact on learning, on employment and on life in general. We also want to identify these as self-management/self-direction skills.

A good place to start talking about these skills can be in the early stages of developing the training plan. Depending on how and when your literacy program starts the training plan process, this could be as early as during the initial assessment.

Some discussion about goals and goal-setting will occur during both initial assessment and training plan development. This in turn leads to a discussion of how learners might achieve their goals which then brings up the topic of what skills and knowledge need to be included in the training plan and just what individualized programming can look like. Together with the student, you will discuss not only reading and writing skills but also the skills, behaviours and attitudes that impact on learning and success. For example, you will probably talk about setting goals, regular attendance, working with others and so on. This helps position self-management/self-direction skills as an important and integral skill set in the learning continuum.

Literacy students are generally facing change as they enter a program: discussing the self-management/self-direction skills could be a good lead-in to a discussion about change. Change is something we all have to cope with, especially in today's world of rapidly changing technology. For example, even if we don't consider ourselves computer literate, we can't escape the fact that computers are increasingly a part of our everyday lives. We need to apply for Employment Insurance benefits online, air and rail travel companies use e-tickets, colleges put most of their information online rather than printing out course catalogues and the list goes on. Even if we don't like the increased emphasis on computers, they are there and we are faced with them.

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