International Literacy Day stories 2
23 November 2011
In recognition of International Literacy Day this year we asked for your stories about inspirational people who have made a valuable contribution to or achieved highly in the Language, Literacy and Numeracy sector. Read on for another of the stories submitted.
Engineering training success for Corrections Inmate Employment (CIE) instructor
Gordon Astrop is part of a team of 57 CIE Instructors who deliver embedded literacy and numeracy within vocational settings in prisons, as part of the Corrections Inmate Employment training programme. Gordon was recently acknowledged for his outstanding success in having nine out of ten learners complete their National Certificate in Mechanical Engineering (NCME) Level 2 in April.
Gordon credits much of his success to the level of homework assigned each week. The 20-30 hours of homework assigned involves the learners in reading material on engineering and then writing reports on what they have read. These explicit activities done over time help build learners’ reading comprehension and critical thinking skills – a key aspect of lifting overall literacy skills. Gordon has just had eight learners from another group of ten complete the NCME. The final project for this class involved two teams designing and manufacturing Gravity Driven cars to specification, and then racing them. The project required the learners to complete all the necessary mathematical calculations, provide written descriptions of their machining and manufacturing processes and sketches of the finished cars.
This is an excellent example of integrating unit standard requirements and literacy and numeracy training into an engaging project. Gordon is making outlines of his homework assignments available for adaptation and use by fellow Instructors who are deliving embedded literacy and numeracy.
Over the past two years, the Tertiary Education Commission, Adult Literacy Education Consulting and the CIE National Training Team have supported 57 CIE Instructors to complete the National Certificate in Adult Literacy and Numeracy Education (NCALE) Voc, enabling them to deliver embedded literacy and numeracy within their vocational courses. 620 prisoners commenced vocational courses in 2010/11 that entailed embedded literacy and numeracy training.