Integrating literacy accredited programmes

National University of Ireland Maynooth

The National University of Ireland Maynooth course is designed for teachers and trainers in any subject who wish to increase their ability to help learners develop the language, literacy and numeracy needed for the course and for the vocational or workplace practices. The course has been provided since 1999, having been originally developed and piloted then by NALA and NUIM in partnership with FAS and Teagasc. Since then participants have included teachers, vocational trainers and literacy tutors from a range of agencies and centres, including Teagasc, FAS Community Training Centres and Local Training Initiatives and VEC further education programmes.

Literacy Development Centre in WIT

NALA cooperated with the Literacy Development Centre in WIT to design and provide the Extending Literacy module. This is a 35-hour module, intended for literacy tutors who work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in education and training centres. It aims to assist them to work in partnership with teachers and trainers from a range of subjects, to identify the literacy practices embedded in the courses and to jointly plan ways to assist learners with those. The whole-organisation approach to integrating literacy in education and training involves ensuring that the centre or college has a staff member who is responsible for integrating literacy across the curriculum: a ‘literacy facilitator’. That person should be trained and experienced in adult literacy principles and methods, and the Extending Literacy module builds on that by focusing on the skills and qualities needed to integrate literacy across the curriculum in partnership with others.