Roles and Goals

two women reading from a shared bookCalifornia Library Literacy Services are planned, implemented, and evaluated using a learner-centered framework titled Roles and Goals. The framework helps staff and volunteers:

  • Identify the goals that learners want to accomplish with their improved literacy skills.
  • Deliver learner-centered instruction that is tailored to learners’ goals and aspirations.
  • Track, acknowledge, and celebrate progress.
  • Evaluate the impact of the library literacy program.

Goal-setting empowers learners. It helps learners reflect on what brought them to the program, define what they want to work on, take ownership of their instruction, stay focused on what’s important to them, stay motivated, and build self-confidence.

The Roles and Goals framework is grounded in the belief that literacy “involves listening, speaking, reading, writing, numeracy and using everyday technology to communicate information,”¹ and that literacy is “understanding, evaluating, using and engaging with written text to participate in society, to achieve one’s goals and to develop one’s knowledge and potential.”²

Goal-setting within the framework helps learners achieve success in their major life roles as community members, workers, family members, and lifelong learners.

Resources

Curriculum

Learners’ aspirations and involvement drive the direction of tutoring in California Library Literacy Services, and the Roles and Goals Curriculum project reflects many of the common learning goals that adult learners bring to library literacy programs. The curricula materials support tutoring pairs in making goal-based instruction part of their lesson plans. They also correspond to the learning outcomes information that programs collect annually from tutoring pairs and report to the California State Library.

The links below will take you to Roles and Goals lesson guides and in some cases, to instructional videos and other tutoring resources created to support meaningful learning in California Library Literacy Services that correspond to the Roles and Goals evaluation framework.

Lifelong Learner Outcomes:

Worker Outcomes:

Home and Family Member Outcomes:

Community Member and Citizen Outcomes:

Working together and individually, the talented people listed below created Roadmaps for the new Roles and Goals curricula. Each Roadmap includes Guideposts designed to strengthen and enhance the connection between the adult learner and the curriculum. These Guideposts support ongoing conversations between tutors and learners, strengthening the connection between learners’ learning goals and tutoring activity and learning evaluation and outcomes. The Roles and Goals Curricula direct attention to important aspects of adult teaching and learning – reflection and self-evaluation.

Meet the Curriculum Development Team:

Cheryl Berg Mariposa County Library

Leticia Garcia – Riverside County Library

Casandra Issaka – Sacramento Public Library

Allyson Jeffredo – Riverside County Library

Ellen Loebl – San Jose Public Library

Laura Martinez – Sacramento Public Library

Charmaine Mendez – Moreno Valley Library

Robin Rafael – Napa County Library

Carrie Scott – Carlsbad City Library

Diane Shimota – AK Smiley Public Library

Ana Garcia Villalpando – Long Beach Public Library

Cherall Weiss – Newport Beach Public Library

Amy Prevedel and Randy Weaver, Independent Consultants

During the fall of 2020 and spring of 2021, the curriculum writing teams met virtually to share what they had written and workshop their ideas, providing feedback and support to one another. They practiced strategies to respond to writing, and led two statewide writing workshops on using those strategies for their library literacy colleagues. They used their Roles and Goals-based curriculum pieces as the content of the workshops. We are pleased to share the team’s hard work with you! 

¹ https://www.nala.ie/literacy

² https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016040.pdf