Uncharted Territory - Essential Skills Ontario

CAN SOCIAL INNOVATIONS HELP LES PROGRAMSACHIEVE GREATER SOCIAL IMPACTS?Furthermore, there is a growing consensus in policy circles, social services, andthe fields of education and skills development, that place and context matter.Innovation leading to positive outcomes generally occurs in a policy context ofdecentralization, deregulation, and greater levels of autonomy, competition andchoice. Experience has shown that one cannot create a truly innovativeenvironment when there are too many top down administrative requirementsthat add rigidity to the system, take up a significant amount of resources(human, time and financial) and emphasize outputs and metrics too oftendisconnected from achieving better outcomes.Beyond the challenges of funding and administrative requirements, there is aneed to recognize that for any innovation to be seriously considered, or attractthe necessary funding, current approaches are limited. In many jurisdictions,specifically in the United States, innovative adult basic education programs suchas I-BEST (Washington State), Shifting Gears (Illinois), and RISE (Wisconsin) arebeing purposefully designed to address specific challenges (Foster, Strawn &Duke-Benfield, 2011).These initiatives first identified what the primary challenges of the adult basiceducation system were and then worked to resolve them. They focused onlearner persistence, program duration, appropriate client characteristics, positivelearner outcomes and impacts on earnings. Furthermore, they waited until theyhad evidence of effectiveness of the innovation before exploring alternativefunding models. In Canada, the field of LES has yet to identify and develop acommon understanding of the nature and scope of the challenges it faces.Uncharted Territory: Can Social Innovation Revitalize Literacy and Essential Skills Programs? • 25