Over the past months, several people in different groupings and in different places have begun to talk about the idea of a Scottish Association of Adult Literacies Practitioners. Committed to taking forward new principles of practice flowing from the explicit adoption, in policy, of a social practices perspective of literacies, practitioners across Scotland continue to encounter structural barriers related to conditions of employment and short term funding. Often struggling in isolation, many are finding it hard to maintain morale and sustain and develop practice consistent with the shared set of values.
The final gathering of practitioners associated with the pilot TQAL programme culminated in a discussion of the need for an independent association of practitioners. Building on the connections made through TQAL, it was suggested that we should establish a national association which might engage with the concerns of practitioners and develop a collective voice with which to influence policymakers and employers.
Although some face to face, possibly regional, meetings were felt to be important, it was considered urgent to establish an online forum for further discussion about how to progress this idea.
This blog will hopefully allow us to promote the idea widely to practitioners across Scotland, air our concerns and consider how we might proceed. Please contribute your ideas and let others know about the blog. ( If you click on the envelope icon below, you can email your friends this post.) If you want to be able to post a new blog ( click on the pencil icon below) rather than simply add comments, please leave a comment with your email address and you will receive an invite to join the list of blog authors. Remember you can subscribe to the blog and also add yourself to the list of 'followers'. This will help us get an idea of the number of people interested in the idea of the Practitioner Association.
This blog has been set up to provide a forum for Scottish Adult Literacies practitioners to discuss how to progress the idea of a national association. Please let as many colleagues as you can know of its existence and encourage them to contribute to the debate.
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32 comments:
Great that this blog has been set up and hope that it will give Adult Literacies Pratitioners a collective voice that will be heard by policy makers, funders and employers.
Let's get the conversation going. tell all your colleagues about the blog and add your ideas in a post now.
This is a great opportunity for us to put theory into practice and be heard as a collective voice. We have the social capital and strategic positioning, we now need collective action to promote transformative policies.
I'm in! Just what I need to stave off the VLE withdrawal pangs. Good to see y'all.....
This is certainly a very interesting development, and I intend to pass on the details of the blog to people I know will be interested in how it develops. What else should I be doing?
amkthis is new for me - my first attempt to use a blog. There is a real need to promote what is done in adult literacies in Scotland and this seems like a chance to start to work together in a different way.
I've opened a wiki where we can keep documents related to our practitioners' forum. Hopefully you can use the following link:
http://aln-practitioners-forum.wikispaces.com/
think you'll have to cut and paste.
I will post the 2007/2008 ALN report on the WIKI for people to read in order to refresh their minds on where we have been and hopefully trigger ideas about where we should be going!
Hello everyone. We need to actually start doing something, now that we have a group of people wanting to work together.
We need money to build a website. Colin I think you mentioned NIACE offering us money, I'm not sure if you have emailed them, but I just did anyway in case you hadn't. We need that to start the ball rolling. Colin if you've already done this can you let us know what's happening? If I hear anything I will post it here.
A point about the website. Sharon McNamara can do the site for us but we will need to pay her. I think we should aim to use our own members to do paid work rather than it going to some web design company. If we use Sharon, she will know pretty much what we want - forum facility, resource section, blog section etc, so we won't have to explain all this to someone from the outside.
Once we get the money for the site, Sharon could have it up and running within a week.
While we are waiting to here about funding, why don't we start lightheartedly and think of some rules of conduct for the site, which would be an informal type rule section.
My rule 1: Don't write loads of text, keep it as brief as you can, it puts me off reading it.
What about another section where we just ask questions relating to the problems we see - I think Alan wanted to discuss short termism.
It's going to be diffcult to decide on content because we are not meeting face to face with each other.
Can everyone leave their email address on this? Mine is annettecurrie@hotmail.com
Just said my goodbyes and had a wee last look round the VLE.
And so...here we all are again - revved up and ready to shake up the world of Scottish Literacies (and about time too!) Looking forward to being part of this step forward. So, what next???? Lets get some kind of foundations built and structure for the discussions. I think we should all agree on a list of priorities and tackle things that way. My top 3 are: A stable web presence, organising roles for the association and the legalities of membership/financial details. Without solid foundations anything else is likely to collapse.
Sharon
We’ve taken the first step; we’ve got a blog and we’ve got a wiki. What’s next?
What we need now is lots of interested, peripheral bloggers to take the plunge and become professional activists.
• What do you want from this forum?
• How do you see it developing?
• How do we move on to the next stage?
• What is the next stage?
I think that the next step is to get word out and generate interest in our forum, collect ideas and address Tina’s prompts (listed below for those who have not seen them).
“Name of the Association, Group, COP?
Paid subscription/membership?
How many people on the management committee/steering group/core team and what roles will they have? Suggestions
Regularity of face to face meetings? Locations?
Website? What kind of things do you want to see on this?
Newsletters?
Areas of concerns? Issues to discuss or fight?
etc”
I would like to see an area, or maybe arena, where those involved in adult literacy can have their say, let off steam and share their good practice; where we can consolidate the wealth of accumulated and valuable experience that we have; a place where each and every opinion is considered valuable and valued. Perhaps we need to keep in mind Brookfield’s observations of democracy, that it follows the majority thereby creating a minority.
My concern is that it develops into an ‘anger room’, where we go to complain and moan. What steps can we take to prevent this happening? Maybe we could develop an area called ‘venting’ and this is where you go when what you want to do is to complain.
Please register your interest and start to leave your ideas and comments. Remember without your input, this Practitioners’ Forum is going nowhere!!
recommend clicking on 'followers button' for 'literacies publisher', Tracey's given links for some interesting blogs and sites including their established Canadian online magazine, which could give us some ideas for our own version. I especially liked the folowing link: http://wordle.net/create
Hi there
I appreciate this opportunity to express my views on this subject because I have run/supported local (Glasgow) practitioner networks in the past and believe that we need to move away from networks whose remit, boundaries, etc. are set by someone else (i.e. local government and those who have a responsibility to local government). Many times in the past I have taken part in network meetings that consistently overlook real concerns expressed by practitioners because they don't want to deal with the tricky stuff. When I have something to say, I want to be with able to do this without being told that the network is 'not the place to do this'. I am sick of so-called networks whose function seems to be to elicit great ideas and information from practitioners who are then overlooked when it comes to highlighting good practice in Glasgow. I can think of one specific example where the excellent work of a practitioner was high-jacked by a member of local government as an example of how great 'Glasgow' is at providing innovative approaches to literacies provision. This was presented at a conference workshop with the implication that 'local government' had developed this project when in fact they had nothing to do with it. Needless to say when the presenter bumped into the practitioner in question at the conference they were suitable surprised and forced to do a quick re-think about how they presented 'their' innovative idea.
We need to avoid this type of 'network' at all costs but I also think we need to avoid becoming a guild as this implies exclusivity. I think we should set up a Scottish Association of Adult Literacy and Numeracy Practitioners (whatever we call it - I agree that can be sorted out later) that doesn't follow the pattern of all those others who have management committees, etc. that seem to be filled with the same old faces and those who are not practitioners. This needs to be something new and truly democratic - not representational democracy. I agree that we would need to look at legal requirements but I don't see why we can't decide who does what when something needs done and ensure that everyone who joins plays an ACTIVE part in the running of the association. This can be determined by expressing our particular areas of interest/expertise/locality/etc. and setting up groups that research particular areas when we need information on this to take our campaign forward. We can vote on the big stuff and decide who should represent us when this is appropriate. This person would necessarily change according to the issues under discussion/investigation/etc. I realise that this is a less than straightforward approach but I think we need this level of commitment from members to make this work. I also appreciate that some people have more opportunity to devote time and resources than others but we should be able to participate to the best of our abilities without being passive. If we are committed to this then to echo Alien's sentiment and put our money where our mouth is and get on with setting up a website and talking to a whole lot more people than just those of us fortunate enough to have participated in TQAL.
I also think we need to look at regional forums (again we can sort out the name later) that can meet face to face more often than a national one could. Maybe a regional meeting twice a year and a national one annually or go for two annual meetings. That would give us opportunities where we all get together for the day to catch up and share practice (expereince of good and bad), face to face contact cannot be replaced by an online environment but the online office will act as a hub for all the activites.
Catherine
Hi there
Gerry you speak of your enthusiasm waning already and I think that it's indicative of the main obstacle to setting up a network, you only have to look at how many people have contributed to this discussion so far to see that already the commitment of practitioners is under strain - although there may be many reasons for this but it will interesting to see how many of those who were there on Mon/Tue will take part.
There were some important issues raised during the discussions last week and the main one was the relevance of setting up a network that some practitioners felt replicated what is already there in particular RaPAL. I think it's important to define what the purpose of this proposed network is so that we can begin to engage everyone in a discussion around the merits of setting up a Scottish association. I think we need an association that will focus on specific Scottish issues relating to pay and employment condidtions as well as a space for members to share practice in the knowledge that no one will 'steal' their ideas and that they can be credited for their work. These issues cannot be addressed by an organisation such as RaPAL nor should they be - we are perfectly capable of doing this ourselves and maybe we should just start to think about roles and responsibilities just now. For example a couple of us should start looking at the legalities of setting this up and charging a membership fee, others should look at setting up a blog (I freely admit my ignorance in this particular matter), etc. However I also think that organisations like RaPAL should be used to our benefit because it offers something specific and that is access to other practitioners in different countries that are useful as a sounding board among other benefits. There is always a danger that we may become too insular and healthy connections with RaPAL (which is, as we know, also a membership organisation) I think are important. I also think that others would be interested in what we are doing and that sharing our experience with the wider literacies community is vital. RaPAL offers a good mechanism to achieve this.
I agree that setting up a blog right now where everyone can contribute is our first priority. We can then email every practitioner on the TQAL list (including those who withdrew) and get the ball rolling. I think we also need to email our own contacts to get them invovled at this stage of the discussion so that we can get as many as views as possible. However I think it's also important to factor in that discussion around setting this up cannot continue indefinitely and that soon we will have to move on this if there is agreement that we need an association. Maybe identifying a timeline for discussion and set up would be advantageous at this stage.
What do you all think?
C
Hi there
As suggested by Aileen, I've added my comments from the VLE onto this blog and I think it would be good for everyone to do this as the VLE will be gone by Friday.
Having read everyone's comments so far I think it's great that there is so much enthusiasm among those registered but I think before we do anything else we should all email our contacts with the links so they can join in as well otherwise this runs the risk of looking like some TQAL offshoot that excludes those who haven't done TQAL. I don't think this blog should exclude anyone and firmly believe that we hear as many voices as possible before any decisions are made regarding name, website, etc.
Also in relation to the NIACE support I know Colin is on Holiday at the moment but my understanding is that NIACE would do the work for us for no cost. I could be wrong.
I like the idea that we do things in-house, however I don't think we should be paying people for their services just yet - particularly since there is no money yet. I also think that once we open this forum up to as many people as we can - and I don't just mean emailing people we like or those WE THINK might be interested, I mean contacting everyone we know who is involved in literacies and being advocates for this Association - I think we will find a wealth of talent that we can draw on to do a whole range of work. I thinks it's really important to reiterate that the members registered so far don't represent the beginnings of a management group - you know my feelings on that if you read my other entries - but rather act as advocates for a cause.
So Aileen has set up the blog and Geri has set up something we can save docs in (you can tell how much I know about all this by my use such technical language as 'something'), I'm happy to look at the legal side of setting up an Association and charging membership fees. If anyone has already done this and want to share their findings or wants to join me in this endeavour then please feel.
I realise someone mentioned not writing loads but I think if we are really committed to this cause then we won't mind reading what other people have to say. Which reminds me, Geri I like your idea of a 'venting' area - kind of a virtual punch bag - great stuff!
C
1. Name of the Association, Group, COP?
2. Website? What kind of things do you want to see on this?
3. Paid subscription/membership?
4. How many people on the management committee/steering group/core team and what roles will they have?
5. Regularity of face to face meetings? Locations?
6. Newsletters?
7. Areas of concerns? Issues to discuss or fight?
These are the questions which we started off with. I would suggest that we confine our thoughts and ideas to addressing each in turn AND NOT JUMP ALL OVER THE PLACE. In the light of Annette's comments perhaps we should first consider a name in order that Sharon/NIACE can set up and 'label' our website.
Reasons for Sharon setting up website –
1. Fully cognisant of our needs and aspirations.
2. Innovative and technologically experienced.
Reasons for involving NIACE
1. Finance.
Would it be possible for Sharon to be financed and work in conjunction with NIACE??
It is imperative that this issue is democratically resolved ASAP!!!!!
I am totally enthused by the contributions and level of commitment everyone has shown in respect to addressing literacy practices in Scotland.
Like everyone else, I have just finished TQAL and was beginning to wonder what to do next coupled with thoughts about where would this qualification take me?
I am sensing that perhaps more than a few of us are thinking this way given the direction Tina's thread has taken us.
I wasn't able to get to the gathering, unfortunately but it has truly proved to be a worthwhile opportunity for those of you who did attend.
Your contributions are excellent.
From my perspective I agree with the association idea. I also think the blog is an excellent idea. Well done Aileen.
Mulling over the contributions everyone made, I agree that we shouldn't allow this space to become soley an 'anger space'. Yes we want to air our frustations but not to the point that we don't go forward constructivley.
Also, as someone said, I think what's important is to be sure what is our purpose. This for me as many have also said needs to be our priority. We need to think this through as it's important we don't replicate what already exists.
In going forward then perhaps we should consider constructing a constitution or vision/mission statement. This could be done by requesting everyone who wants to should contribute a post on the blog with their ideas in no more than 6-8 points.
This could be followed up by arranging a suitable venue where as many as possible could come togehter for a day to iron out the final format.
During this day we could also set aside time to begin to put together the framework of a document which to all intents and purposes would be a business plan.
During this period we would be discussing the how, what, where, who to target for financial aid in the form of grants, etc.
The blogsite would be useful as I think it offers the potential for those of us with management and business development skills to filter through and come to the fore.
This point was suggested by someone who said that it didn't matter so much about positions as everyone would have an opportunity to make a contribution.
I think if it works in this way then it would allow us to create a truly democratic working ethos.
Following this method or something similar really helps focus our attention towards thinking through the mechanics of creating a 'blueprint' for the association.
Most crucially it gets us to think through what our priorities are so that we can set down short-medium and medium-long term goals with financial details set aside them along with resource requirements (such as regional / national committees).
I realise this needs to be thought through more and that there might be other approaches we could consider. But hopefully it gets us thinking about how we set this thing in motion.
I absolutely agree that this initiative has to be about positive action and not just moaning but... (!) I have just re- read the ALN report that Alan helpfully added to the wiki and, for me, it a telling demonstration of the key problem. The report highlights lots of brilliant, creative work that is going on in Scotland. Work we ought to be proud of. However, there is no evidence at all of the struggles that I know are around right across the country - of precarious work situations, uncertainty about contracts, short term and/or piecemeal funding, erosion of conditions of employment (including cuts in the hourly rate for tutors), inequitable access to information, resources and CPD opportunities etc etc. If you only read the report you might imagine that everything in the garden is rosy. I guess what I want to see here is an engagement with these structural issues, that acknowledges the struggles that are going on in every corner of the country and celebrates the commitment of those who are taking forward such exciting work despite all the difficulties. My vision is for an organisation of practitioners from every part of the field who will combine their considerable skills to ensure the structural,systemic issues are not ignored, but addressed. As Sachs says.... 'activist professionalism'(http://www.mcgraw-hill.co.uk/html/0335208185.html) is not for the faint hearted. I would like to be part of an organisation that is not afraid to be political.
Just to say, I've added a link to the wiki Gerry set up - see bottom right hand of the page.
I'm also having some identity issues! Because I set this up, (but wanted it to reflect the wider voice) I'm not sure how I can post a blog as me and I don't want to be an anonymous manipulator! So I did post the new blog, taking up Brian's idea. Maybe someone else could post another new blog as a place to consider some of the practical next steps?
I’m happy to report that at a local (Glasgow, Falkirk, West Lothian, Edinburgh and South Lanarkshire) WEA Workplace Literacies Tutor / Organiser meeting this week I raised the subject of our proposal to form an association with fellow colleagues. The idea was positively received and my colleagues are interested in pursuing the matter further (it was suggested that Edinburgh would be particularly receptive to the formation of an activist association). Can I suggest (if it has not already been done) that we forward the blog address to all of our literacies contacts to try and get as many people involved as possible?
Hi, I emailed NIACE about getting money for a website. They said they only do England and Wales and told me to email 'Scotland's Learning Partnership' and 'Learning Link Scotland'. So I've just done that and hopefully they should email me back by about Tuesday. Getting the website up and running as soon as possible is really important. If we have a site that we can direct our contacts to then they are more likely to want to join in.
We could actually use it to do a lot of research. When people join we could collect a lot of information. We could also put different surveys up that could be linked to some of the discussions that take place. Having it as a research base would be invaluable to practitioners who want to engage in research, either for a qualification or personal interest (or both).
That was me who left the last comment. Forgot password, just worked out how to reset it!
Hi there
I know Colin is now back from Holiday so it might be an idea to let him get in touch with his contact and see how things pan out. Otherwise I agree we should start looking at other sources of funding but I still think we need to steer clear of Government bodies.
Catherine
Would like to add my support for a forum/collective body for literacies workers. There is definitely a need for independent discussions/action to ensure that the voice of the practitioner is heard more in the current climate. I will speak to my colleagues here in the Western Isles and try to encourage participation in the blog. I imagine regional meetings would be of interest and could provide important support for workers in rural areas.
Great to read the blog and thanks to all for the effort and enthusiasm. I agree about the mix of face to face and online contact and the importance of developing a collective voice for practitioners.
Update on funding:
Spoke to a couple organisations, they can't help with funding at this stage, but we can link in with them once we are up and running.
They suggested applying for lottery money. To get lottery money we need to form a committee. GCVS will help us do this. They are going to find out what kind of organisation we can be - e.g. charitable status.
So we need a committee. How do we go about this when we are spread out so wide?
Should people volunteer to be on the committe, and arrange to meet?
Update on funding:
Spoke to a couple organisations, they can't help with funding at this stage, but we can link in with them once we are up and running.
They suggested applying for lottery money. To get lottery money we need to form a committee. GCVS will help us do this. They are going to find out what kind of organisation we can be - e.g. charitable status.
So we need a committee. How do we go about this when we are spread out so wide?
Should people volunteer to be on the committe, and arrange to meet?
I think we need to establish a steering group. There are too many of us and a few people need to take the wheel. This group could lead from behind and represent the entire body of practitioners who would be continually consulted and enagaged with for any decision making etc. The group would then be able to physically meet and co-ordinate the way forward taking with them the views of all of us.
What do you think? Who would seriously be interested in putting themsleves forward for this?
Hi everyone. I am just back from France and am very impressed at the amount and depth of discussions you have had over the past 2 weeks. Though I shouldn't really be surprised with anything that TQALers do.
In my experience the next step is, as Sharon says, to set up a steering group who will co-ordinate the establishment of the constitution, legal status, name, financial status etc. Obviously this would be done, for and on behalf of the members and thereafter the steering group would be disbanded and a new group would be elected to take over the running of the organisation.
My only slight reservation about throwing this open to everyone at the moment, is that we don't really have anything in existence that we are asking people to join. All we are doing is asking for their support. We could get bogged down with having too many indians and no one taking the helm to get things moving... only a slight concern.
I would be up to progressing this project. Maybe we should have a page/comment space for those who would be keen to be involved in the steering group.
Tina Beales
Hi there
I've left a post in the 'practical issues' regarding the steps involved in setting up an association. Please leave comments.
Catherine
I hope that the energy and enthusiasm for creating the network can be built and sustained through activities such as this the blog. Its great to see so many ideas but harder to harness these and develop a strategy for implementation.
Lets try and get more people in at this early stage and then move forward together.
David
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