Equipping Adult Educators to Work with Business – PA WIN (Pennsylvania)

Key Concepts

• Consistent state-wide approach to work-based learning
• All programs based on a basic skills framework
• Provide participating adult educators with resources, tools, and training to ensure quality control and business-focused approach

Background

The State of Pennsylvania’s Adult Basic and Literacy Education Interagency Coordinating Council (ABLE ICC) was created under the State Adult Basic and Literacy Education Act 42 of 1996. This council of adult basic education stakeholders has been meeting since November, 1997, for the purpose of developing recommendations to improve the delivery and outcomes of basic skills services. One of the Council’s recommendations was to establish a basic skills support system for incumbent worker programs across the state. Thus was born PA WIN – The Pennsylvania Workforce Improvement Network.

PA WIN’s purpose is to help literacy providers integrate the basic skills needs of their community’s workforce within the services offered by their agency. Its purpose is to address the basic skills needs of Pennsylvania's workforce. PA WIN is funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Bureau of Adult Basic and Literacy Education (ABLE). As part of the ABLEworks initiative, PA WIN is one of six projects in the Pennsylvania focused on basic skills in the workplace. PA WIN’s focus is unique. The services provided by PA WIN affiliated agencies are:

• For incumbent workers only,
• Customized to specific workplaces,
• Rooted in the Foundation Skills Framework,
• Poised to encourage future fee-for-service training contracts.
  

PA WIN workplace education programs use a common approach, based on what is referred to as the Work-based Foundation Skills Framework. These define the nature and level of the essential skills and knowledge that workers need to function effectively in today's workplace. This Framework is organized as follows:

Basic Workplace Skills

• Locates and uses resources
• Applies mathematical concepts and operations
• Reads with understanding
• Writes clearly and concisely
• Speaks clearly and concisely
• Listens with understanding
• Observes critically
• Uses technology

Basic Workplace Knowledge

• Applies health and safety concepts
• Understands process and product
• Demonstrates quality consciousness
• Understands finances
• Works within organizational structure and culture

Basic Employability Skills

• Demonstrates effective interpersonal relations
• Demonstrates self-management strategies
• Works in teams
• Solves problems
• Makes decisions

Lifelong Learning Skills

• Knows how to learn
• Manages change
• Applies skill and knowledge in new contexts

Working with Business

PA WIN requires that all funded projects incorporate a stakeholder training team within the targeted business to facilitate the planning and implementation process. The PA WIN program developers work with the training teams to determine very specifically what success will look like in each project. This discussion evolves into the determination of the focused training objectives, which always must connect to a larger business goal.

Needs Analysis: Extensive basic skills needs analysis is required of all PA WIN funded projects. Analysis includes a customized or blended use of:

- Existing data
- Formal / informal interviews
- Focus groups
- Customized learner assessments
- Surveys of employees and / or supervision
- Literacy Task Analysis
- Observations, etc.

Linking Training To Business Goals: All PA WIN projects must connect the training objectives to the business goal of the employer. For example:

Business goal addressed: To improve quality consciousness by improving basic workplace skills.

Project Objectives: By the end of the training, each participant will demonstrate ability to:

- Understand 80% of basic verbal job instructions.
- Reduce translation time by 25%.
- Reduce supervision time by 20%.
- 75% of participants will advance one instructional level using the Foundation Skills Learner Achievement Form.

Project Evaluation: PA WIN uses the Foundation Skills rubric in a systematic process for documenting progress in these highly customized, short-term training projects. Program developers work with the workplace training teams to develop the criteria used to assess skill levels ranging from beginning to competent. For example, competency is determined using a pre-determined blend of the following criteria:

- Learners will correctly demonstrate the identified skill 81-100% of the time.
- When demonstrating the use of this skill, learners will:
- Have a 0-19% error rate
- Perform independently
- Locate and use all of the available resources
- Take expected amount of time to complete the task
- Incorporate all of the competencies

PA WIN strongly encourages the use of all four of Kirkpatrick’s levels of evaluation, but frequently the employer is resistant to extensive evaluation tools being used. There is a good deal of resistance to both needs analysis and evaluation in the workplace because of the resources required for conducting this kind of research. Evaluation tools used in PA WIN projects includes a customized or blended use of:

- Existing data
- Formal / informal interviews
- Focus groups
- Customized learner assessments
- Surveys of employees and / or supervision
- Demonstrations and observations

Training Adult Educators to Work With Business

In order for adult educators to access PA WIN funding, they must become approved PA WIN Affiliates. This affiliation process involves a thorough training process for adult educators, including an intensive two-day “boot camp” and various follow-up sessions. During this training they are taught about the Foundation Skills Framework and, just as importantly, how to work cooperatively with the businesses they are serving. Specifically, this latter focus covers:

• Understanding the culture and language of business
• How to do market research
• How to determine specific training needs
• How to draft training agreements
• How to design a curriculum that addresses specific training needs
• How to budget time and resources
• How to evaluate programs

This PA WIN Affiliates program helps ensure a consistency of approach in work-based learning across the State, and is designed to foster success and encourage follow-up work-based learning programs that are not dependent on State funds. (44% of the employers who benefited from PA WIN funded training continued with the same adult basic education providers to purchase fee-for-service contracts totaling over $260,000 and training an additional 2,000 workers.)

Related Websites

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