ABSTRACT
The educational and labor market policy context in England has generated an unprecedented level of state support for workplace basic skills programs as part of the national Skills for Life (SfL) strategy. Substantial government funding, through the channels of the Learning and Skills Councils (LSCs), Regional Development Agencies (RDAs), and Trade Union Learning Fund (ULF), has given rise to a wide range of literacy, numeracy, and ESOL provision across all sectors of the economy and public sector. These include discrete literacy, numeracy, and ESOL courses in the workplace, SfL embedded in IT, SfL embedded in vocational and job-specifi c training as well as “LearnDirect” SfL courses undertaken in online learning centers in the workplace. The absence of evidence about the effects on learners and organizations of participation in such provision underlined the need for large-scale longitudinal research into “Adult Basic Skills and Workplace Learning.” This research, part of the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council’s Teaching and Learning Research Program (TLRP) and cosponsored by the National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy (NRDC), has provided a framework within which the realities of adult basic skills learning accessed through the workplace can be explored longitudinally.
