Rui Vieira de Castro

Literacies in the Workplace

In Portugal, particularly after the dissemination of the results from the first national study on Portuguese adults’ literacy levels (Benavente, 1996; OECD & Statistics Canada, 2000), which pointed to a severe literacy ‘problem’, successively reinforced, since 2000, by the regularly low performance of the Portuguese students in OECD-PISA, a particular perspective about the power and the personal and social effects of literacy, in a certain way, a “popular theory about literacy” (Carrington & Luke, 1997, p. 96) became prevalent in the public sphere.

Shifts in the field of the adult education. On training paths for adult educators

ABSTRACT In contemporary times the adult education field faces relevant shifts leadingto the emergence of tensions and dilemmas that force its reconfiguration.Therefore, several problems rise in what adult educators’ training is concerned,mainly these induced by the prevalence of certain forms of training.Searching for innovative ways of conceiving and developing adult educatorstraining, the Unit for Adult Education of the University of Minho joined theproject A Good Adult Educator in Europe (AGADE). In this paper, theauthors wish to present six principles by which a disposal of adult educatorstraining can be based on. Key-words: adult education; training disposals for adult educators. 1. Lugares de partida 1.1. Nos paises centrais e nos paises da semiperiferia, o campo daeducacao de adultos 1 , nos tempos mais recentes, tem conhecido mutacoesradicais associadas a multiplas causas, entre elas a crise do projecto origi-nal da educacao de adultos (FINGER e ASUN, 2001; CANARIO, 2006), asreconfiguracoes do Estado, da sociedade civil e das suas relacoes (DALE,2005; LIMA e AFONSO, 2006) e os novos desafios sociais, ecologicos,politicos e culturais com os quais este campo de praticas se confronta(STROMQUIST, 1998; WELTON, 2005).Dentre estas mutacoes, sao particularmente significativas as que es-tao associadas as alteracoes da economia nas sociedades capitalistas e aosseus impactos nos contextos de trabalho; no quadro destas mudancas, emparticular aquelas que envolvem a economia, o trabalho e a formacao, temsido atribuida uma crescente importância a educacao de adultos, nomeada-mente a