Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework

The OALCF is a competency-based framework that supports the development of adult literacy programming delivered through the Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS) Program.  As the cornerstone of the LBS program, the OALCF links the program to the requirements of employers, education and training providers and community partners in a clear way and furthers the Employment Ontario promise of building a highly-skilled, highly-educated workforce in Ontario.

The OALCF:

• supports the development of task-based programming
• helps practitioners focus on strengthening the learner’s ability to integrate skills, knowledge and behaviours to perform authentic, goal-related tasks
• supports the development of contextualized programming that reflects the learner’s culture, language, and other features specific to the learner and their goal
• builds on current literacy practice and strengthens the links between the LBS Program and Ontario’s employment, education and training system

The Curriculum Framework is the foundation of the OALCF and outlines what is commonly available at an LBS program. It describes six, broad, competencies – generic categories of learner abilities—that organize the content of the LBS program. These competencies are embedded in authentic and purposeful tasks that show how literacy learning transfers to goal-related activities.

The Curriculum Framework uses three levels to describe the increasing complexity of these tasks, and learner’s developing proficiency in performing these tasks.

The Curriculum Framework also provides examples of what a task at the end of the level looks like; end-of-level tasks are categorized by OALCF goal path, providing practitioners with additional support in designing and implementing literacy programming.

The OALCF improves learner outcomes by supporting adult literacy programming that is learner-centred, goal-directed, and linked to a broader system of service provision.

To achieve improved outcomes for learners, the OALCF:

• uses a task-based approach to literacy training that helps learners use literacy skills to meet real-life challenges as students, employees, and citizens

focuses on learner transitions through the development of programming related to five distinct OALCF goal paths: employment, apprenticeship, secondary school credit, postsecondary, and independence

• has a common language for describing learner progress and readiness to transition to next steps that supports greater learner mobility and more effective referrals and service co-ordination.

The OALCF tools and resources provide practitioners with practical guidance on how to develop goal-directed programming that will help Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS) learners to transition to their goals.

When developing programming for learners, literacy practitioners start by asking, “What does this learner need to know and be able to do to be prepared for their next steps beyond LBS that this learner can’t do now?” and “What credentials or other proof of learning does the learner need to meet the criteria to enter the goal?”

By answering these questions, a practitioner makes decisions about content and any other supports that a learner might need.

To help guide the practitioner in answering these questions, five goal path descriptions have been developed, and descriptions are available:

1. Apprenticeship
2. Employment
3. Postsecondary Education
4. Secondary School Credit
5. Independence

An Introduction to Goal Path Descriptions for Practitioners and Learners has been provided to explain how the goal path descriptions were developed and how they can improve learner outcomes. The goal path descriptions will provide practitioners with valuable support in developing goal-directed programming by providing important information that will both inform the goal-setting process and contribute to the development of the learner plan. They help practitioners and learners make good decisions about the selection of a goal, learning activities, and assessment methods and about other supports that might be necessary for learners’ successful transitions to their goal.

Both the goal path descriptions above, and the curriculum framework, provide support for practitioners and learners in developing programming that is goal-oriented, task-based, and learner-centred. Another key resource in developing programming is the Integrated Tasks by Goal Path document. An integrated task is a complex task that incorporates two or more tasks, usually from different competencies. This allows learners to develop and apply their skills and knowledge across competencies in a way that reflects real life situations.

With a better understanding of goal requirements, practitioners can also use the Learner Plan Template to develop better informed learner plans.

Practitioners map out the details of a learner’s program in a learner plan. The learner plan includes the key elements of a goal-directed, transition-oriented program, that will inform programming decisions.

The learner plan includes key OALCF features that are intended to improve literacy outcomes, including:

• a focus on the transition of the learner beyond their LBS program to a chosen goal
• use of a common language and approach for describing learning activities and achievements
• incorporation of learner supports provided through referrals and service co-ordination.

For detailed instructions on how to administer milestones, including what to do in the event a learner is not successful, please refer to the Milestone User Guide available on the password- protected Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework Repository.

The following criteria apply to those learners who should complete a culminating task:

• The learner has completed all elements of the learner plan.
• The learner has successfully completed day-to-day learning activities, tasks, milestones and integrated tasks at the same level (or higher) than those required in the culminating task.
• The learner agrees to complete the culminating task because they have consulted with the practitioner and feels prepared.

All learners who meet the above criteria should be encouraged to complete the culminating task. Ultimately, the learner and practitioner together determine when the learner is ready to complete the culminating task.

If a learner wants to upgrade their skills in a single subject (e.g., mathematics) and does not want to do milestones or a culminating task, it is ultimately their choice. In this case, the service provider would only report in the Employment Ontario Information System – Case Management System (EOIS-CaMS) that the learning activities were completed successfully.

Having a credential, however, is not always a guarantee that all required competencies, skills and knowledge are present. Since LBS is not a credentialing body, having the student do milestones, and a culminating task along with their learning activities (e.g., secondary school course work or Academic And Career Entrance (ACE) course work) is not a determined requirement for their transition to their goal. However, they are requirements for the funded organization to demonstrate accountability to the ministry that the learner is demonstrating that they have the competencies (milestones), the knowledge (learning activities) and the ability to apply learning to a complex task (culminating task) required for successful transition to their goal.

Every effort should be made to have the learner successfully complete all three performance indicators (milestones, learning activities and culminating tasks) to indicate successful completion of their goal path and readiness to transition to their goal.

Milestones are goal-related assessment activities that learners complete to demonstrate their abilities to carry out goal-related tasks. Each milestone is directly related to one competency and task level within the curriculum framework. The Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework competencies—the broad, generic categories of learner’s abilities—capture and organize the learning that takes place in Ontario’s literacy program. The curriculum framework’s six competencies support learning regardless of a learner’s goals, backgrounds or interests. Learning activities related to science can be included within any of the competencies and task groups.

The focus for all programming decisions should be based on the overarching mandate of the Literacy and Basic Skills program: to help adults to achieve their goals of employment, apprenticeship, secondary school credit, post-secondary education and independence.

Milestones and culminating tasks are assessment tools which support the learner, service provider and ministry in evaluating the progress a learner is making while in the program, as well as their readiness to proceed to their next step destination. Neither tool is more important than another. Ultimately assessment tools should be used to inform service planning which will assist a learner in achieving their goals.

For detailed instructions on how to administer milestones, including what to do in the event a learner requires an accommodation, please refer to the Milestone User Guide available on the password- protected Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework Repository.

Milestones have been designed to be used in their original form, following consistent administration and scoring guidelines. These measures ensure that the experience and outcomes related to attempting a milestone are equivalent for all learners. No changes can be made to the milestones themselves to adapt them for learners with special needs. This includes making any changes to documents, texts, prompts or questions or administering only partial milestones. Once all components of a milestone have been completed, then it can be recorded in EOIS-CaMS.

• Culminating tasks are authentic, complex tasks made up of at least two competencies.
• Culminating tasks are used alongside learning activities and milestones to help provide a reasonable assurance that a learner is ready to transition to their goal.
• Culminating tasks draw together multiple competencies that may be at different levels of complexity. Successful completion of culminating tasks is a demonstration of the learner’s ability to manage tasks beyond the LBS program.

All aspects of the Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS) program are voluntary, including culminating tasks and other performance measures (e.g., milestones). Learners are permitted to participate in LBS whether or not they attempt a culminating task.

While learners are not required to complete culminating tasks, service providers are required to include a culminating task in each learner’s plan.

We know that many learners will not demonstrate full readiness for transition, but we need to know what portion of our learners are, in fact, ready for their goal. The completion of a culminating task is the consistent indicator of a learner demonstrating readiness for transition.

The following criteria apply to learners who attempt to complete a culminating task:

• The learner has completed all elements of the learner plan.
• The learner has successfully completed day-to-day learning activities, tasks, milestones, and integrated tasks at the same level (or higher) than those required in the culminating task.
• The learner agrees to complete the culminating task because they consulted with the practitioner and feels prepared.

All learners who meet the above criteria should be encouraged to complete the culminating task. Ultimately, the learner and practitioner together determine when the learner is ready to complete the culminating task.

For detailed instructions on how to administer culminating tasks, please reference the Culminating Task User Guide available on the Contact North Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework Repository.

Until now, there has been an insufficient number of culminating tasks available to practitioners to be able to capture completion rates. Capturing completion rates will help us understand LBS effectiveness in several ways, including:

• how well we are doing at fully preparing learners for their next step.
• how well the requirements of learners’ goals are understood.
• how well service providers are assessing the needs of learners in terms of those requirements, and;
• how well service providers are able to support learners to achieve their goals.

Literacy and Basic Skills service providers are now expected to:

• include a goal path-specific culminating task in learners’ service plans as new plans are created and existing plans are updated.
• provide all learners who complete the learning activities and milestones in their plans with the opportunity to complete a goal path specific culminating task.
• document a learner’s successful completion of a culminating task in CaMS to support our collective understanding of the relevance and efficacy of culminating tasks as an indicator of transition readiness.

Information to support LBS practitioners with the administration of culminating tasks is available in the Culminating Task User Guide on Contact North’s repository. It provides guidance on the administration, scoring and interpretation of learners’ performance on the culminating tasks, as well as debriefing learners and EOIS-CaMS reporting.

No, culminating tasks just need to be added when learner plans are being created or updated.

The memo should be read as a reminder and explanation of existing policy, rather than an introduction of a new requirement. Its intent is to remind service providers about the requirement of culminating tasks in learner plans, to encourage service providers to use the new culminating tasks, if appropriate, and to record the data in CaMS about their completions.

All aspects of the LBS program are voluntary for learners, including culminating tasks and other performance measures (e.g., milestones). Learners are permitted to participate in LBS whether or not they attempt a culminating task.

While learners are not required to complete culminating tasks, service providers are required to include a culminating task in each learner’s plan, per the LBS Service Provider Guidelines, namely:

• LBS service providers must:
• Work with learners to develop a learner plan that reflects what the learner needs for the goal path.
• Ensure that the learner plan:
• Identifies the learner’s goal path.
• Details the learning activities to prepare learners for their goal path.
• Identifies milestone tasks that the learner needs to successfully demonstrate.
• Identifies the culminating task.

We understand that, because of the insufficient number of culminating tasks, many LBS practitioners have not included them in learner plans. However, the wide adoption of the use of culminating tasks is necessary to understand their efficacy as an indicator of transition readiness and goal completion; and to gather the data needed to set a standard to support the inclusion of this measure in the Performance Management Framework (PMF). This will provide the beginnings of baseline data collection that will, over time, inform the eventual standard for the Completion of Goal Path measure when it is operationalized as a core measure of effectiveness in the LBS PMF to complement and provide a counterbalance to the Suitability measure.

Yes, the memo applies to all Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS) service providers, including e-Channel. Further program development work is required to address the need for a greater variety of culminating tasks, for significantly more culminating tasks to be digitized for the e-Channel network, and for a series of culminating tasks specifically focused on transition readiness for learners with goals to enter another LBS program. Until such time, there are sufficient culminating tasks available to establish a standard for completions. Service providers that are not able to find a culminating task that is suitable for a learner should document this on the file and notify a support organization of the unmet need. This will support the ongoing development of the bank of Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework (OALCF) assessments.

Yes, they will need to include a culminating task in their learner plan. Culminating tasks are a measure of transition readiness and goal completion. The service provider will review the list of culminating tasks to determine one that best aligns with at least one of the learner’s learning goals related to their success in transitioning in their next step. That said, we also acknowledge that not all learners will choose to do a culminating task when they exit, even if they feel they have achieved their learning goals and the culminating task is relevant.

We have identified the need for a series of culminating tasks specifically focused on transition readiness for learners with goals to enter another LBS program with the understanding that the focus of the culminating task is on the multiple competencies required to manage the environment of the learner’s goal and that it is often the work of community-based programs to prepare learners for school board or college delivery.

We encourage all service providers to continue identifying the need for specific culminating tasks  to be developed to meet the needs of the learners they are serving. In time, we will have a fully functioning system to help us better understand the effectiveness of LBS in several ways including:

• how well we are doing at fully preparing learners for their next step.
• how well the requirements of learners’ goals are understood.
• how well service providers are assessing the needs of learners in terms of those requirements.
• how well service providers are able to support learners to achieve their goals.

Literacy and Basic Skills programs are encouraged to provide feedback and recommendations on the wording in EOIS-CaMS and any other additional suggestions through the regional support model. To clarify, the responses to the question “Has the goal path specific Culminating Task been successfully completed?” are as follows:

Yes – the learner attempted and was successful.

No – the learner attempted and was not successful.

No Response – the learner did not attempt a culminating task.

Yes, the ministry has updated the learner plan template to include a space for the name of the culminating task. It is important to note, however, that the learner plan template available on the Employment Ontario Partners’ Gateway (EOPG) is meant as an example of what a learner plan may look like, and service providers are encouraged to adapt the template to their unique needs. Service providers using other learner plan templates are encouraged to create similar materials/revise their current ones to identify the culminating task chosen.

EOIS-CaMS does not track the specific culminating task chosen. This information will be included in the learner plan, but not in the EOIS-CaMS service plan. The focus of the culminating task is on the multiple competencies required to manage the environment of the learner’s goal. Until there is a sufficient number of goal path-specific culminating tasks developed, service providers can select a culminating task that has relevance to the learner and includes the same competencies required to manage the environment of their learner’s goal. This should be documented in the learner plan, and the service provider should notify a support organization of the unmet need to support the ongoing development of the bank of Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework assessments.

No. While both culminating tasks and milestones are aligned with the Curriculum Framework, they are different in their nature and serve different purposes with respect to assessment. Milestones are goal-related assessment activities that learners complete to demonstrate their abilities to carry out discrete goal-related tasks and are used to demonstrate progress from one Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework complexity level to another within a particular competency and task group. Culminating tasks are integrated tasks. They are more complex than milestone tasks in that they draw together a number of tasks in multiple competencies which may be at different levels of complexity. The successful completion of a culminating task is an important demonstration of the learner’s ability to manage the kinds of integrated tasks they will encounter once they transition beyond the Literacy and Basic Skills program.

EOIS-CaMS does not track the specific culminating task chosen. This information will be included in the learner plan, but not in the EOIS-CaMS service plan. The focus of the culminating task is on the multiple competencies required to manage the environment of the learner’s goal. Until there are a sufficient number of goal path-specific culminating tasks developed, service providers can select a culminating task that has relevance to the learner and includes the same competencies required to manage the environment of their learner’s goal. This should be documented in the learner plan, and the service provider should notify a support organization of the unmet need to support the ongoing development of the bank of Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework assessments.

Literacy and Basic Skills programs are encouraged to provide feedback and recommendations to streamline EOIS-CaMS through the regional support model.

Culminating tasks are developed by support organizations. Literacy and Basic Skills programs are encouraged to connect with their provincial or regional support organization to request the development of specific culminating tasks to meet identified gaps.

The requirement of including culminating tasks in learner’s plan is meant to open a dialogue between service providers and their learners about transition readiness and culminating tasks (i.e., this requirement is not punitive). If the service provider and learner determine that there are no relevant culminating tasks available, this should be noted in the learner plan, and ‘No Response’ selected as the culminating task option in EOIS-CaMS. Service providers should communicate this and any other gaps they identify to their support organization.

The five Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework (OALCF) goal paths were identified by Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS) service providers in a consultation process held in 2008. It was agreed that these goal paths covered the broad range of purposes that learners had for coming to LBS and were easily understood by members of the public without requiring additional explanation. Goal paths do not suggest curriculum but do point the service provider to the expectations and requirements for the learner to successfully transition from LBS.

The LBS program is not curriculum-based. The ministry does not prescribe curriculum but depends on the professional judgment of service providers to provide learner-centred programming. Learners are assessed to determine gaps in knowledge and their programming is tailored to provide learners with what they are specifically missing in order to achieve their goals.

Academic Career Entrance (ACE) is the content that may be delivered by colleges as learners prepare for postsecondary, apprenticeship or some employment goals. The ACE Certificate (issued by colleges) is what some learners want to earn while in postsecondary preparation programming.

Neither ACE courses nor an ACE Certificate is a goal path, just as the Ontario Secondary School Diploma is not a goal path. The goal paths capture the broad purposes for why an adult may come to the LBS program. It is the service provider who determines together with the learner, what the specific program content (e.g., ACE courses) and mode of delivery will be based on the person’s prior learning, available time and needs. As a result, no two learner plans are the same and that is what is unique and essential about an adult education program such as LBS.

Completion of Goal Path is a measure of those who successfully complete all elements of the learner plan. There are three indicators of completion:

• Learners who complete all milestones;
• Learners who complete culminating tasks;
• Learners who complete the learning activities