National Adult Literacy Database

In 1999-2000, the Metro Toronto Movement for Literacy conducted a project called Adapting for a New Environment. The purpose of this project was to try to relate existing knowledge about literacy work to the new requirements of the provincial Literacy and Basic Skills Section. Two sets of workshops were held.

The first set of workshops was called Rereading the Matrix. The second set of workshops was called What Doesn't Get Written Down: How Experienced Literacy Workers Move from the Generalizations of Training Plans to the Particulars of Daily Practice . These workshops looked at the interaction between written documentation and spoken language in the new Literacy and Basic Skills environment, which requires written “training plans” as one kind of documentation. What kinds of relationships are possible between a written training plan and the ongoing process in which a learner and the people who support his or her learning work and plan together?

This resource book presents some follow-up material from their presentations. It also includes an interview with Wendy Tanner, a community literacy worker at Parkdale Project Read. This interview elaborates on an evocative point that Wendy made at one of the workshops, that “what doesn't get written down is who the learner is.”