Results from survey: AlphaPlus adapting to educator priorities

1. What are literacy educators’ classroom goals?
2. What professional development and resources are your peers seeking?
3. How are reporting and compliance requirements impacting your capacity?

We asked these and other questions in a recent survey, and I’m writing today to share what we learned with you.

What adult literacy instructors are saying about their experiences

Earlier this year, AlphaPlus conducted research to inform our strategic planning and product design work. We wanted to better understand the priorities and needs of literacy educators as we continue to shape our programs, services and training opportunities. Through our online survey, we heard from 328 teachers and practitioners from community-based, school board and college settings. We also conducted phone interviews with nine teachers and six sector leaders. Thank you to all who took the time to provide input.

The research has helped us to understand your needs, challenges and desire for support in areas including:

• Classroom goals
• Professional development
• Resource and technology needs
• Compliance with ministry requirements
• Sector challenges

Here’s a sampling of what we heard:

• Teachers want to learn and improve. Your commitment to learning and improving teaching methods to support your students is very strong.
• Compliance is time-consuming. A significant percentage of teachers noted that the time they spend on compliance with ministry reporting requirements negatively affects the time they spend or would like to spend developing effective teaching practices.
• You’re motivated to meet your learners’ needs. Responding appropriately to student needs and assisting them in achieving their goals motivates your pursuit of professional development.

See the survey summary for more details about what your peers had to say about their experiences.

AlphaPlus: Strengths, challenges and future effectiveness

We also asked you questions to understand what you most value about AlphaPlus. You mentioned our:

• Technology focus and expertise.
• Thought leadership and team members.
• Knowledge of teaching and working in the literacy and basic skills (LBS) field.
• Reach across the college, school board and community-based streams.
• Connections to umbrella organizations and connections to government.
• Research to understand and improve the sector.

We learned that to support you effectively in the future, we need to leverage our strengths to address the day-to-day needs of your students and classrooms. We need to listen continuously to the changing challenges you face. And because practitioners are experiencing pressure due to restricted funding, heavy administrative loads and measurements that aren’t shifting with changing student needs, we must advocate for changes that impact the practitioner level.

Shaping our future approaches to supporting educators

Your survey responses are already informing our strategic planning and service design, ensuring the decisions we’re making now align with educators’ needs. This sometimes means documenting frameworks for what’s already in place. For example, we’ve already offered advisory groups, training and communities of practice, which we’re now organizing more formally. Your feedback is also influencing decisions about changing the types of support we will offer or increasing the amount of support available.

Digital environments are changing much of what adult literacy educators do, including lesson planning, creating learning environments and managing online spaces. Technology is not a separate element; it’s impacting everyone’s work. The good news is that our collective understanding of the impact of technology on our work is much richer and more varied now than it was five or 10 years ago. As a field — and at AlphaPlus, an organization supporting the field — we’re ready and open to continuous adaptation and improvement.

Would you like to learn what your peers had to say about teaching adult literacy in Ontario? See the survey summary here.