Practitioner Questions

PART 1: Your Personal Experience/Career (Practitioners)

When did you get involved with Adult Literacy /ABE and how? [ENTRY STORY]
What before? What now? [Dates if possible]
Motivations; why got involved. Political motivation. Did these change?
Involvement with Literacy, numeracy or ESOL?
How were these different aspects of ABE organized in the place you worked? What were the programmes called then?
Can you describe where you have worked? What kind of organizations?
Who did you work with (other tutors, students) Who were they? Why were these others involved? Where did they come from?
Who managed your work as a volunteer/ tutor? Any contact with other volunteers/tutors?
Training? Support, guidance?
Materials you used? Methods? Induction of new students? A typical session........
Would you do the same now?
What skills were important to your work:
What resources were significant/important?
What were your aims as an ABE volunteer/tutor? Influences on these?
How did you gauge whether you were making a difference to your students. How did they know if they were progressing?
How would you say you were regard as a volunteer/tutor/organizer? How was your role understood (by you, other staff, by students)
Was important information regularly circulated to you? Were you consulted about changes and decisions that affected the organization of your work?
If you moved from one role to another when and how did this happen?
Have you ever had a management role in ABE?
When and why did you leave basic education?

Did you know about the adult literacy campaign at the time[give date]? Did you know what was going on more generally at local/national/regional level?
Have you followed policy and practice developments since then?
How do you keep up-to-date with policy and practice developments?
· Contact with national agencies?
· Media campaigns
· International events?
· Networks you were/are part of?
"There have been many policies recently about ABS. Where do think these have come from and who are the people who create them?" Views about the actors and the policies themselves.
How important a role do you think the media have played? In what ways?[e.g promoting awareness of the need, changing public perceptions teaching through TV, reporting in the press]
Tell me about [an initiative] you were involved in a tutor/volunteer. Was it your own idea or were you asked to do it? By whom? What were you expected to do? How did you respond to this? What difference has it made to the field (learners or staff)
X and Y people have said this about this initiative "QUOTE......" How would you respond to that?

Looking back at your career path in decades 1970s 80s 90s, who or what has been most influential in developing the field of ABE as it stood before the new Skills for Life campaign/as it stands now?
What stands out when you look back at your experience of ABE? Could you identify a key moment (s) what would this be (they be?)
· Key people
· Key moments
· Key organizations
Highs and lows? Good and bad things about being involved - difficulties, challenges, contradictions, pleasures, satisfactions?
Lasting effects on you, your views, your professional activities?
Effects on how you view your own literacy and educational experiences, attitudes, practices
What do you think the next step will be and why?