Skill acquisition

This article describes a study that investigated aspects of formal, non-formal, and informal learning for workers and adult high school learners seeking literacy and essential skills.

Researchers gathered information from respondents in Manitoba, Ontario, and Nova Scotia, using semi-structured interviews with instructors and learners to obtain qualitative data, and questionnaires to obtain quantitative data.

Learner Skill Attainment (LSA) was a large-scale research initiative, spearheaded by Ontario's College Sector Committee, designed to assist Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS) learners in Ontario move more easily among the programs that serve their educational and training needs. The initiative identified five pathways that LBS learners take to transition to greater independence, employment or further education and training.

This report concludes that both labour and management are waking up to the fact that they will face very real problems if they fail to start planning now to replace the loss of experience and skills from retiring workers. Forward planning by both unions and companies will have to address the skills needs of both companies and workers in terms not just of current needs but also of what skills portfolio would be appropriate in the future.

Canadian manufacturers are restructuring their businesses in response to the challenges they face in global markets. The emergence of new market opportunities and disruptive low-cost competition, the rapid development of new technological capabilities, more demanding customers, a more demanding public, and intense bottom-line pressures are changing the nature of manufacturing worldwide.

The goals of the Essential Skills and Food Sanitation and Hygiene Training Impact Study were to research the correlation between food safety training and essential skills and to lay the foundation for the development of user-friendly, practical training materials for food safety certification.

This Final Report outlines the research undertaken and the recommendations put forward by the project partners.

A Language So Dear... by Jeanette Winsor is a story in the book Wayfering Journeys in Language, Learning and Culture, it is a collection of writings by ABE instructors and students in Newfoundland brought together for a "language awareness project", designed to explore attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge about language and the teaching of language.