Tuesday 13 June 2017


A recent talk at Skills Highway

I was asked to make a brief presentation to the workplace literacy and numeracy sector several weeks ago. This was organised by the amazing team at Skills Highway. A big thank you for inviting me. It was attended by a great group of people, and boy, what amazing work they are all doing. 

All attendees were passionate, smart, and very up-to-speed on current initiatives. In fact, the workplace literacy sector tend to be the most effective, experienced and robust communities in the adult sector. I think this reflects the challenging nature of workplace literacy. In my mind, the most challenging training environment available.   

To give you an example, the table I was sitting at was populated by Gary Sharpe the winner of the 2016 Literacy and Numeracy Leadership Award, Di Boss, literacy and numeracy specialist at ServiceIQ, Claire Matheson (Boss lady at Coffee educators), Jan Eyre of NZCER fame and a wonderful researcher, and several others of equal impressiveness. Quite the crowd.

As for the presentation, it was okay. The clip below starts 15 minutes into the presentation. For some reason I got off to a rushed start and stayed that way. The tone is a little harsher than usual.  

I'm didn't quite make my points particularly well either. However, I received a lot of feedback about the difference between rehearsal and elaboration strategies. I also received feedback about improving the 'needs analysis' process to include learners' conceptions and workplace representations of concepts, and how these could be 'unpacked' to improve trainee outcomes.

Here are some links to previous posts if you are interested: 




They are only blog posts so if you would like a higher quality research-based review perhaps leave a message. 





Sunday 4 June 2017

Teaching/learning maths at home


Someone asked if I would post this again.  A little long but probably still worth a look.




A spelling version is in the works. Might take a while due to workload but it'll be worth it when it finally hits the screens!