Blog by Sari Sulkunen

Quite often we perceive blue-collar work as manual and physical work in which literacy has only a limited role. Indeed, adult literacy surveys have shown that the role of literacy is pronounced in expert occupations (e.g., senior officials and managers) and to some extent in white-collar occupations (e.g., clerks and sales professionals) (OECD 2013; 2020). In contrast, literacy has a minor role in blue-collar occupations: workers read and write less frequently and less diverse materials at work and show lower level of average literacy proficiency than experts or white-collar workers (Grotlüschen et al. 2020; Sulkunen et al. 2021). However, these surveys focus on limited set of self-reported print literacy activities, ignoring the work-specific practices and the multimodal meaning making. While qualitative, often ethnographic, studies paint a more nuanced picture, such research on blue-collar workers’ literacies is scarce (cf. Karlsson, 2009; Schümchen & Lilja, 2024).

Motivated by the gap in research, we launched a project called “Professional multiliteracies in increasing safety at construction work” in 2024. In the project we aim to increase understanding of the literacy practices and their role in construction work. We also aim to make visible the diversity of the literacy practices and possibly enrich the representations of construction work as labor in which literacy has only a minor role. We are interested in the following questions:

• What kind of multimodal and multilingual literacy practices do workers at construction site engage with?
• What kind of role do these practices have in the work and its safety?
• How can we develop safety at work by enhancing and making visible literacy practices?

The research team consists of researchers at the University of Jyväskylä and the Finnish Institute for Occupational Health. The 2,5-year project is funded by the Finnish Work Environment Fund.

Why did we choose to focus on construction work? Firstly, construction site is a unique setting with fragmented employing organization and multiprofessional constellation of workers at a shared workplace. This is a challenge for communicating work and safety. Secondly, construction work is a high-risk work, and in such a work, safety, tasks, and communication are interwoven and safety issues are used to govern the work (Strömmer 2020). In conditions with limited hearing and visibility, for example by noise and hearing protection, workers use a wide range of multimodal resources to communicate. Thirdly, construction sites are in a typically multilingual as they offer entry level work for migrant and guest workers (Kraft 2017). In such setting, multiple ways to negotiate work and safety issues are needed.

In the project, we have adopted the framework of professional multiliteracies which acknowledges that meaning making is intertwined with the aims, tasks and professional practices of the work community (Moje 2015). In addition to using language or multiple languages, people make meaning using multiple semiotic resources, such as images, sound, videos, gestures, material objects and the combination of these (Bezemer & Kress 2016).

In this qualitative project, we collaborate with five Finnish construction companies. They offer us access to construction sites for data collection and, together with the research group, develop multiliteracy practices to increase safety. Currently, we are in an active data collection phase which means stepping out of the research chamber and going to the construction sites to interview people, to observe and record work and literacy practices at the site and organizing workshops to brainstorm ways to increase safety.

It has been quite an experience to put on all the safety gear, including safety shoes, helmets and hearing protection, and step into the new surroundings with new language and practices. We are already looking forward to analyzing the rich dataset and share the results with wider literacy community!

For more information, contact the author at sari.sulkunen@jyu.fi

References:

Bezemer, J., & Kress, G. (2016). Multimodality, Learning and Communication: A Social Semiotic Frame. Routledge. 

Grotlüschen, A., Buddeberg, K., Dutz, G., Heilmann, L., & Stammer, C. (2020). Low literacy in Germany. Results from the second German literacy survey. European journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults 11 (1), 127-143. https://di.org/10.25656/01:18848

Karlsson, A.-M. (2009). Positioned by reading and writing: Literacy practices, roles, and genres in common occupations. Written communication, 26(1), 53–76.    

Kraft, K. (2017). Constructing migrant workers: Multilingualism and communication in the transnational construction site. PhD dissertation. University of Oslo. 

Moje, E. B. (2015). Doing and teaching disciplinary literacy with adolescent learners: A social and cultural enterprise. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 254–279. 

OECD (2013). OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First Results from the Survey of Adult Skills. OECD Publishing. 

OECD (2020). Continuous Learning in Working Life in Finland, Getting Skills Right. OECD Publishing. 

Schümchen, N., & Lilja, N. (2024). ‘No trash – do not touch’: Handwritten textual objects at a construction site. Discourse & Communication, 18(5), 789-816. https://doi.org/10.1177/17504813241240394

Strömmer, M. (2020). In the name of security: Governmentality apparatus in a multilingual mine in Arctic Finland. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 25, 217–234.  

Sulkunen, S., Nissinen, K. & Malin, A. (2021). The role of informal learning in adults’ literacy proficiency. European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults, 12(2), 207–222.