Open AccessTen Years of Adult Literacy Policy and Practice in Canada: Literacy Policy Tensions and Workarounds
Author(s) -
Suzanne Smythe
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
language and literacy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1496-0974
DOI - 10.20360/g2wk59
Subject(s) - literacy , workaround , accountability , nexus (standard) , politics , work (physics) , political science , public administration , sociology , pedagogy , law , engineering , mechanical engineering , computer science , embedded system , programming language
The years 2003 – 2013 marked a coming-of-age in the adult literacy field in Canada, as it reconciled the politics of international literacy surveys and their accountability regimes with the actualities of literacy work among people caught in the nets of neoliberal economics. The concepts of policy networks, powerful literacies and workarounds are used to capture how educators attempt to escape or repair the effects of standardized accountability regimes to create new networks of adult literacy practice that reflect local learning needs and interests. The nexus of this struggle suggests consequences for the work of all educators within an emerging ‘new precariat’ and downgrading of public education spaces.