Victorian Adult Literacy and Basic Education Council
Active, Informed, Committed Practitioners
VALBEC leads and connects the adult literacy, language and numeracy field in Victoria
Coming Events |
2012 |
July 3-5, 2012 (Cairns) 'TESOL as a Global Trade – Ethics, Equity and Ecology' |
July 6 to 9 (NSW) |
July 11 -13 (Adelaide) |
'Joining the Pieces: Literacy and Numeracy - one part of the picture' |
Sep 21 & 22 (Gold Coast) |
Sep 27 & 28 (Sydney) 'Meeting expectations – Achieving goals' |
October 11 & 12 (NSW) 52nd Annual ALA Conference • 'Lifelong Learning = Resilient Communities' |
Sept 19-21, 2012 (Tas)New numeracy resources - your input
VALBEC is proposing to develop some numeracy resources based on some highly regarded texts no longer readily available.
We want your help in capturing a few of the users’ favourite things from these and other resources by completing a short survey.
The first 20 people to complete the survey (and provide their name) will receive a $10 voucher redeemable at Coles or Officeworks.
2012 VALBEC Annual Conference 'Read the word, Read the world'
When files are provided by presenters we'll add them to the website
A Fuller Sense of Self
During 2010, Tricia Bowen recorded the stories of adult literacy students across Melbourne and regional Victoria. The aim of the project was to gather stories which illuminated the lives and learning experiences of these students, while describing the challenges they faced, the events that had provoked their decision to return to ‘school’, and ultimately how their lives had changed and shifted following that decision to undertake adult education. Their stories reflect a changing sense of personal identity and growth in self confidence to engage with the world.
Impact of low literacy and numeracy skills
The Weekend Australian Magazine recently featured an article on adult literacy and the 46% of Australians identified in the 2010 ALLS survey as having low literacy and numeracy skills. It also looked at the impact that has, particularly in the area of work.
2012 is the Year of Reading • May reading
Pauline O'Maley, VALBEC committee member and avid reader will be posting articles about reading each month.
'Dear Reader,
It seems that this is a thoroughly modern way of addressing you! How do I know this salient fact, along with many other facts about readers and reading? You got it! – I have been reading; reading Alberto Manguel’s fascinating and ambitious book A History of Reading; reading it with you in mind, dear reader, reading to share the delights. Manguel gives us an interwoven story of his own history as a reader along with an enticing history of reading. We learn there was something of the literacy wars, the phonics versus whole language debate, being played out in France in 1787; that Walt Whitman’s childhood classroom had one hundred students, ten to a desk monitored by a single teacher helped by child monitors; that Colette loved nothing better than reading in her ‘bed raft’, an notion that conjures up images of being afloat in a sea of books (one of my life’s fantasies accounted for!). And, more poignantly, that the father of Manguel’s German teacher had, at Sachsenhausen, having learnt the classics by heart, offered himself as a library to ‘be read by his fellow inmates’ (p.64).
My favourite chapter is the one entitled Being Read To - it takes me back to the days of needlework classes, as we diligent girls sewed various table runners in fine cross stitch and blackwork (where are all those table runners now?), a nun read aloud to us from racy classics such as Lorna Doone, which set our hearts aflutter. But clearly I could have had as much fun in a cigar factory in Key West, Florida in the 1920s, where ‘lectors’ were employed to read to the workers as they rolled cigars. No Lorna Doone for them, but, along with poetry, history and political books, The Count of Monte Cristo was a favourite. Both needlework and cigars are now all but relics of a forgotten world.
It is a long book dear reader, I have often fallen asleep over it, something I note Manguel heartily approves of. I haven’t finished yet, I’ll share the delights of the second half with you next month. So thank you Mr Gutenberg and good night!'
Manguel, A 1996 A History of Reading, Harper Collins Publishers, London.
'Reading the Fine Print: A history of the Victorian Adult Literacy and Basic Education Council (VALBEC) 1978 – 2008'
Purchase nowAuthor Beverley Campbell has been involved in education for thirty-five years, twenty-five of those in adult literacy education. She is a past president of VALBEC (1989-91) and a former member of the Adult Community and Further Education Board of Victoria.
‘Fancy Footwork: adult educators thinking on their feet’
(Eds. D Bradshaw, B Campbell, A Clemans)
This book invites you to travel in
the footsteps of a group of women,
all adult educators from Melbourne,
Australia. In their desire to explore
the spirit of adult education, they
met and wrote regularly over two
years.
Their reflections, collected here, take you inside their world. With you, they share what teaching means to them. Writing of joys, dilemmas and dangers, they reveal the complexities of teachers' lives and teaching work. Read these stories and you might very well find yourself heading in new directions.