The Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is a comprehensive global assessment of adult skills, testing literacy, numeracy, and adaptive problem-solving. The initiative, managed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), has taken place each decade since the mid 1990s. The 2024 results provide insights about particular adult skills and how they have evolved over the past decade. Assessment data, combined with extensive background questionnaires, provide insights about skill outcomes and skill development.
This overview and commentary synthesizes key findings from OECD reports and a presentation, offering an overview of Canada’s performance. It highlights OECD developed implications for adult learning policy, and provides some guidelines for messaging that programs can use. It also clarifies lingering misconceptions about people’s performance on the assessment, specifically at lower levels, and shares OECD findings related to people’s abilities to meet everyday literacy, numeracy and digital demands.
Read our concise report to understand the latest PIAAC results and their significance for adult learning and skills development in Canada.
The CAEC is a very different test compared to the GED. Preparing learners means educators will need
- Time to make the adjustment
- A different instructional approach that relies on building content knowledge in both online and offline environments, followed by the development of the digital and test-taking skills needed to demonstrate that knowledge
- New resources to support the two-fold instructional approach
- Professional training.
Take a look at our resources to find out more about the three main types of changes in the CAEC:
- Digital changes with the new online testing platform, test questions and sources to read and interpret
- Content changes in reading, writing, science and social studies, including questions without sources (math has fewer changes)
- The use of a cognitive complexity framework that emphasizes the application of conceptual knowledge and skills rather than the recall and reproduction of facts.
What is PAL?
The Planning a Lesson website — PAL for short — is a lesson planning companion that’s a little like a conversation with a teaching peer—a peer who has already thought about planning engaging lessons that flow.
The ideas and materials in this digital space stem from thoughtful questions, robust discussions and the collaborative efforts of the PAL working group. Thus, PAL is a space to engage with the insights from front-line LBS practitioners just like you, and to garner some handy tips.
PAL could also be used as a place to return to for inspiration or to spark discussions around learner-centred approaches and strategies with LBS colleagues.
PAL is
- A new way to look at lesson planning
- An opportunity to reflect on your practice
- A space for front-line insights, tips and resources
You will find a blended-learning lesson planning flow developed for and by literacy practitioners grounded in research and research-in-practice. It is kitchen tested but flexible enough that you can add your own flavour and refine the process to meet the needs of your evolving practice.
PRE-LESSON:
Anticipating challenges
- Challenges to lesson flow present themselves before the lesson even begins. Technology issues and day-to-day class logistics can impact a lesson.
- Consider the most common pre-lesson challenges that can become bottlenecks to flow and try to turn them into learning opportunities.
THE LESSON:
Planning for learning and lesson flow
- Skills are honed not only through discrete tasks, but through active learning strategies and lesson components that build upon each other for connections to be made.
- Take a look at planning a lesson where adult learners work with digital tools and each other by way of activities that are purposefully planned.
POST-LESSON:
Taking the learning beyond the class session
- Taking the learning and newly acquired digital skills into the real world, post-lesson, is a way for adult learners to solidify their learning.
- Explore some simple ways to encourage learners to think about their digital wins and reflect on how to apply their new skills beyond the LBS classroom in a meaningful way.