Session Information
23 SES 08 C, Global / Local Conversations about Adult Literacy Research
Symposium
Contribution
Education to meet labour market demands and employer needs is a key priority in New Zealand’s 2009 Tertiary Education Strategy. Government agendas for language and literacy education align with global discourses that link economic productivity to quality control, standardisation and proceduralisation (see for example, Virgona & Waterhouse, 2004) through tight control of skill-based curriculums, standardised language and literacy assessment, and funding. Yet the interpretive interview and observational study reported here, involving employers of migrants and tertiary-educated migrant employees, shows employers to accept a range of linguistic diversity and to judge migrant employees in subjective, complex ways. These employers tended to form judgments about employees’ personal traits linked implicitly to their language use (similar to Campbell and Roberts, 2007), and also on employees’ interactional style in managing hierarchical workplace cultures. They interpreted employee behaviour through individual past experiences with migrant groups, and readily attributed mistakes on the job to cultural background and inadequate language. The implications challenge government policy – first that in continuing to ignore the importance of meanings in use, it leaves migrants on their own to understand the complex dynamics of the globalised workplace, and second, it absolves employers of the responsibility for their own professional development.
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