This paper investigates why over 50 workers who qualified for ESL training did not participate in the EWP programs offered on-site at two garment factories in Canada. Findings are drawn from a research project commissioned by Levi Strauss & Co. (Canada) in 1990. Results indicate that advertised programs, supervisor resistance, production and income anxiety, domestic and social pressure are more likely to lead to "dropout" than limitations in the programs per se. The authors conclude if an EWP program is to be effective, it must address not only the linguistic needs of the ESL workforce in a particular context, but its relationship to larger social and economic structures in the workplace and wider community.

In this article we discuss the current nature and circumstances of cosmopolitanism and what it means to the field of adolescent literacy. Drawing on contemporary scholarship, cosmopolitanism is understood as: 1) the local experience or condition of globalization, what has been called ‘internal globalization,’ and, 2) as a disposition or sensibility that ensures productive and peaceful relations in light of globalization or any circumstance that creates dynamic and culturally diverse contexts. From a critical review of the key documents in the field, we argue that for many adolescents their lives and literacies now, and especially in the future, will be lived out in the interface of the local and global. In what might be described as a cosmopolitan age we discuss what that means for the field of adolescent literacy. In critical review of the work done under the rubric of adolescent literacy, it was evident the field has been carefully documenting the terrain of adolescent literacies, and leading the charge for reform in policy and practice. However, there is a need to reconfigure and expand the concepts, precepts and practices that have come to name adolescent literacy in order to ensure that students are well served by the field and by their literacy education. Cet article discute la nature et les circonstances du concept de cosmopolitisme et ce qu’il signifie dans le domaine de la littératie des adolescents. Du point de vue du savoir actuel, ce concept définit (1) l’expérience ou la condition locale de globalisation, ce qui est connu sous le terme de « globalisation interne » et (2) la disposition ou sensibilité qui assure des relations productives et pacifiques dans un contexte global ou toutes circonstances qui créent des contextes culturellement dynamiques et différents. En nous basant sur une révision critique des documents clés, nous argumentons que les vies et les littératies actuelles et futures de beaucoup d’adolescents seront vécues dans une interface entre un monde tout aussi local que global. Nous discuterons ce que ce monde peut représenter dans le domaine de la littératie adolescente dans l’ère cosmopolite. En révisant cette littératie de façon critique, il est facile de s’apercevoir du nombre croissant de publications et de son importance dans la réforme de politiques et de pratiques de terrain. Il est cependant tout à fait nécessaire de reconfigurer et de développer ces concepts, préceptes et pratiques afin d’assurer leur adéquation dans le domaine et l’éducation en littératie des adolescents.

No abstract

No abstract

These are good questions. Indeed, many of the manuscripts we are now adjudicating provide a picture of what it means to be a reader and writer in the 21st century and, more often, what the teaching of reading and writing looks like or might look like in light of changing times and changing notions of literacy in New Times.As we near the end of the first decade of the 21st century, there is much yet to explore in the questions posed by Luke, Elkins, and Goodson. However, as educators and researchers become increasingly comfortable with new literacies and the teaching of 21st-century textual practices, we may want to focus on broader questions of meaning and significance in these times-in our times; some might say, hard times. We begin our editorship by asking, What does the teaching of reading and writing mean in these times for adolescent and adult learners, their teachers, and the larger society? What are the implications of these literacies? These are practical questions of context and condition and effect. They are also ethical questions, ultimately ones of value and significance.We suggest that these questions have much to do with what the new literacies and their pedagogies can and might do for us and those with whom we share the planet. Like many of you, we believe that literacy education is about something more than improving test scores, intensifying capitalism, or in the case of digital literacies the mixing of image and print. We suspect that the ongoing issues of peace and conf lict and of violence, poverty, and oppression; the interest in sustainable futures; and the growing concern surrounding the