Literacy Basics - Community Literacy of Ontario

Of course, change isn't just about technology. We also face change in our jobs and in our personal lives. Coping with change, i.e. planning, goal-setting, make decisions, problem-solving, time management etc. requires self-management skills. For example, when someone starts a new job, they have to learn what the job is about, they learn about their co-workers, and they learn the company policies and rules. People also face change at home: children are born and grow up, relationships are formed and sometimes break down, we move to a new house or a new town. When you think about it, nothing seems to stay the same for very long.

It is also important to discuss how your program will measure student progress. This can lead to a discussion about formal demonstrations of learning, informal assessment, academic testing, self-assessment and the specific ways your program measures and documents progress. Self-assessment is an important part of self-management/self-direction and will be discussed in greater detail further on in this module.

Self-management/self-direction skills should also be related to employment, especially for those learners with immediate employment goals. Employers frequently point out that they are prepared to train new workers provided those workers already have the personal management skills essential for being an effective employee. Employers do not have the time or the inclination to provide training on self-management and self-direction; their training focus is on the specific skills required to perform the job.

Discussion of self-management/self-direction skills can be helpful in identifying barriers to learning. For example, some students might have trouble learning because they haven't identified goals and therefore aren't working on things of interest and/or relevance to them. By working on skills related to goal-setting, the students can better determine their learning paths. To choose another possible scenario, a student might not be getting as much work accomplished as originally anticipated. In this situation, the literacy instructor or tutor might want to incorporate some time management strategies into the learner's curriculum. (Of course, there could be many other reasons such as learning disabilities, the work isn't relevant to the learner's goal, stress, etc.) Barriers to learning can be multi-faceted and complex, but self-management/self-direction skills are a good place to start working with the student to reduce those barriers.

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