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What is the Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework?



The Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework (OALCF) is a competency-based framework that supports the development of adult literacy programming delivered through the Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS) Program. LBS helps learners transition to their goals of work, further education and training, or independence. The OALCF:

• supports the development of task-based programming
• helps practitioners focus on strengthening the learner’s ability to integrate skills, knowledge and behaviours to perform authentic, goal related tasks
• supports the development of contextualized programming that reflects the learner’s culture, language and other features specific to the learner and her or his goal
• builds on current literacy practice and strengthens the links between the LBS Program and Ontario’s employment, education and training system.

The OALCF is the new cornerstone of Employment Ontario’s LBS Program, which helped over 67,000 adult learners work toward achieving their goals in 2010-2011.

This site provides information about the OALCF and the resources that have been developed to support practitioners in implementing the OALCF.

• The Curriculum Framework master document (PDF | 580 KB) can be downloaded as a single PDF document. Please note that this document has been subject to minor revision since its release in April 2011; see the OALCF Change Log (PDF | 40 KB) for details.
• MTCU has recently completed the development of several new OALCF resources, including:
  • a Learner Plan Template (MS Word | 430 KB) (printable PDF version 57 KB) and Instructions for the Learner Plan Template (PDF | 300 KB)
  • five Goal Path Description documents for Apprenticeship (PDF | 220 KB), Employment (PDF | 150 KB), Postsecondary Education (PDF | 120 KB), Secondary School Credit (PDF | 125 KB) and Independence (PDF | 95 KB) and an Introduction to the Goal Path Descriptions (PDF | 96 KB)
  • paper on Supporting Learners through Service Co-ordination and Referrals (PDF | 165 KB)
• Visitors can also access the full range of OALCF resources (PDF | 125 KB) developed to date; these resources include the Curriculum Framework (link above), foundation papers on key OALCF concepts, examples of learning materials and assessment tools for OALCF programming, and practitioner guides.

Please contact us with any question or requests for further information about the OALCF.