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  "PageContent": "<h3>LLN and VET Meeting Place – An intersection of LLN and VET practitioners</h3>Forward from ChemèneMany thanks to RMIT literacy practitioner Elizabeth Gunn for this thought-provoking article that offers useful insights for VET practitioners and TAE providers.Writing on behalf of RMIT’s LLN Practitioner team, Elizabeth presents a compelling argument in favour of adopting the term ‘vocational literacy’ when referring to the foundation skills that vocational learners need for competency.Other key ideas that stood out for me included recommendations for:vocational trainers to highlight—and purposefully teach—the literacy practices their students need for competency and the world of work, rather than seeing literacy as an academic pursuitLLN units in TAE qualifications to focus on helping vocational trainers learn how to teach vocational—not academic—language, literacy and numeracy.Read the full article for details and contribute your thoughts and opinions using the comment box.________Full articleDear Chemène,Thank you for supporting our work at RMIT as LLN Practitioners in sharing our approach to integrating LLN in VET. We appreciate the forum you provide here to share ideas about the interrelationship of LLN and VET.Our current LLN Practitioner team at RMIT College of Vocational Education started in May 2021. Over this period, we’ve connected with students and VET educators and observed the abundance of LLN practices that abound in the vocational disciplines where we’ve had the privilege to work. We have documented and reflected on our work in various fora, most recently in an article published in the adult literacy journal Fine Print.The Fine Print article emerged from a panel discussion we gave at the LLN Support Network Conference in December 2022 where we shared with colleagues around Victoria how a pre-training review (PTR) shapes LLN provision in different vocational education and training (VET) courses.As you would expect, writing the panel discussion turned into exploration of scholarship relating to integrating LLN in VET. One of the most resonant studies we discovered through our research was Stephen Black and Keiko Yasukawa’s 2013 article ‘Beyond deficit models for integrating language, literacy and numeracy in Australian VET’. Black and Yasukawa call for a ‘pedagogy based on the social practice approach [that] aims to enable learners to acquire the literacies and numeracies of their discipline in the process of learning that discipline’ (Black &amp; Yasukawa, 2013, p. 579).The hazily understood yet integral nature of LLN in VET is summed up in interview data from a parallel case of LLN integration in a South African tertiary education context (Jacob, 2005, cited in Black and Yasukawa, 2023). A participant in the South African study reflects,‘. . . just working with a language person, you suddenly realise that you’re veering way into the discipline, like talking out from the discipline rather than bringing people in with you . . . the notion of discourses is that when you’re inside one and you’ve been inside one for a long time, you forget what it’s like to be out of it . . .’ (Jacobs 2005, 487, cited in Black and Yasukawa, 2013, p. 579)This quote is a glimpse into something I regularly see when working with VET teachers. The fact that many VE teachers may not be aware that literacy practices of their discipline need to be highlighted and purposefully taught to students (and not left to the chance occurrence of whether the teacher happens to work with ‘the language person’) is something that needs to be urgently addressed in VET teacher training.By framing literacy and numeracy as social practices following Lea and Street’s work on ‘academic literacies’ (1998, 2006), Black and Yasukawa (2013) suggest that,‘a social practice approach may be seen to encourage a pedagogy for change. It is an active approach likely to cause the questioning and improving of existing pedagogical practices. A study skills or deficit approach, by contrast, may be one which aims to accommodate students to the pedagogical status quo’ (Black and Yasukawa, p. 580).What is most useful about Black and Yasukawa’s article is the term ‘vocational literacy’ (which is used in its broad sense to include language and numeracy).What is ‘vocational literacy’?Vocational literacy is understood within the conceptual paradigm of literacies as varied, pluralistic, socially contextualised practices. Equipped with this pluralistic perspective, we can see that literacies are shaped by and emerge from socially mediated social and vocational requirements. Vocational literacy is the ability to read, write, and communicate effectively in the context of specific vocational fields. It involves understanding and using specialized vocabulary, texts, and genres relevant to particular occupations or industries.Vocational texts are too many to list but include communicative items such as emails, text messages, social media posts, screencast instructional videos, scale diagrams and plans, electrical formulae, circuit diagrams, invoices, WHS forms, work schedule Gantt charts, client feedback and return briefs, and tools such as computers, calculators, mobile apps and devices, design and word processing software, internet search engines, AI text /image generators, and so much more.It is critical that the LLN elements in the TAE focus on preparing VET teachers for teaching vocational LLN. These elements must enable new VET educators to identify the LLN features specific to their industry. VET educators do not need to teach school-based generic LLN skills – that is the domain of primary and secondary teachers. Rather, VET educators need to be able to identify the key features of the LLN practices relevant to the industry skills they’re teaching in their courses. They need to know how these texts and instruments, formulae etc are practiced within the industry context and they need to know how to teach these practices to novices (i.e. students) in the educational environment.I suggest that one of the key barriers to VET educators understanding what LLN means in relation to ‘vocational literacy’ is the absence of this concept in the ASQA curriculum materials. Instead of ‘vocational literacy’ we see the phrase ‘core skills’[1]. Core skills implies a predictable linear sequence.There are a few problems with relying exclusively on a linear conception of LLN in VET. Here I suggest three reasons for adopting the term ‘vocational literacy’ to encapsulate and convey the wholistic, complex, context-driven notion of LLN in VET in order to help boost teachers’ understandings about their role in developing students’ LLN capabilities. ‘Vocational literacy’ recognises that learning is a life-long, life-wide process and that technology and literacy demands within every industry are constantly evolving and changing. Its focus is on continual learning for relevant future contexts rather than harking back to learning gaps that may no longer be relevant. ‘Vocational literacy’ asks teachers to identify, understand and purposefully teach students about the specific LLN practices required for successful communication in their industry. This is a reflective process that could be as simple as identifying basic features such mode, audience, purpose, register, etc, related to the target text and its vocational context. ‘Vocational literacy’ implies a dialogic, multi-lateral process of skills transfers between and among learners and teachers. It is conceivable that there are many instances of peer-to-peer transfer of knowledge, or students transferring knowledge to teachers about new practices acquired during work placements or through independent study. We need to acknowledge and harness learning environments that go beyond teacher-to-student transfers of knowledge and skills.As educators specialised in language, literacy and numeracy and vocational education, it is vital that LLN practitioners have a voice in the discourse around how language, literacy and numeracy are integrated in Vocational Education and Training. We call for further research into cross-disciplinary, i.e. LLN and VET, teaching practices and how they can better inform discursive practices in this significant area of the Australian education system. In addition, more attention needs to be given to understanding the complexities of contemporary vocational literacies, numeracies and textual demands as practiced both in industry and education contexts.  More systematic and explicit focus on these aspects of LLN and learning skills in VET will ensure that all students gain the LLN skills they’ll need to manage lifelong learning across the wide range of future workspaces.References:Black, S. and Yasukawa, K., (2013). Beyond deficit modes for integrating language, literacy and numeracy in Australian VET. Journal for Further and Higher Education, 37(4), pp 574 – 590.Gunn, E., Bold, B., Tebb, J., (2023). Exploring different approaches to the LLN demands in different VET contexts, Fine Print, 46(1), pp. 20–25. Jacobs, C., (2005). On being an insider on the outside: New spaces for integrating academic literacies. Teaching in Higher Education10(4), pp. 475–87[1] ie. ‘This unit describes the skills and knowledge needed to identify core skill demands in nationally recognised training products, and in workplace, learning and assessment context tasks and texts. It involves comparing those identified demands with the core skills of learners and candidates in vocational training and assessment and providing integrated core skill support to address the identified gaps.The unit applies to vocational education and training (VET) teachers, trainers and assessors who use a range of technical and training competencies to integrate awareness of core skill requirements into their training and assessment. The core skills are described by current authorised Australian foundation skill frameworks. They include digital literacy, learning, reading, writing, oral communication, and numeracy skills.’ (ASQA, 2023, Course materials TAELLN123455)",
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