Building a strategy for a more Literate Alberta

Summary

The purpose of this project was to convene stakeholders interested in promoting literacy in order to collectively articulate policy recommendations for literacy education in Alberta. The literacy stakeholders – learners, leaders and professionals in the literacy field – defined literacy as the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. They suggested that Alberta requires a comprehensive policy to increase literacy in order to remain a leader in a rapidly developing world and encourage a healthy population because literacy improves wellness and encourages prevention, decreasing acute and chronic care issues.

Grant Outputs

Literacy Coalition –

A cross-sectoral coalition of literacy stakeholders built stronger relationships as an important outcome of this project. This new group learned about diverse issues concerning literacy from one another’s perspective, and created the professional relationships essential to effectively working together to enhance literacy in Alberta.

Literacy – For a Life of Learning! – http://www.nald.ca/library/research/lifelern/lifelern.pdf

This report evaluates the findings of the literacy coalition, defines literacy for its meaning to contemporary society, and outlines a list of policy objectives relating to literacy in order to guide the formation of Alberta’s literacy policy. These include: building a learning based culture in which public, private and voluntary organizations acknowledge and foster the value of a fully literate society, recognizing and encouraging the importance of informal literacy learning that happens on the learner’s own terms and offering programs and services that demonstrate clear, measurable differences to the individual’s literacy skills within the context of their own community. To accomplish these goals, the report suggests that learning should be tailored to meet individual learner’s needs, and that all literacy training should recognize what the learner brings to the learning process, accounting for cultural differences and the diversity of learners.