Search results

This study attempts to find the socio‐economic factors behind the differential achievement level in adult literacy in developing countries.

Considers a number of theories. These include modernization theory, dependency/world systems theory, developmental state theory, new human ecology theory and convergence‐divergence theory as an explanation of the differential level of adult literacy rate.

The findings reveal the importance of the initial level of adult literacy and the population growth. Similarly short‐term economic growth has a significant impact on the initial level of adult literacy, and the medium human development and low human development samples

This attempt to find the factors behind adult literacy is of importance not only as a constituent indicator of the human development index, but also through its various contributions towards economic growth.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences and responses of ten adult literacy organisers (ALOs) from Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare to the growing influence of neoliberalism and the commodification of adult literacy as a skill and function of the economy. The research argues for a greater focus on literacy as a social practice concerned with equality and social justice, rooted in emancipatory and transformative adult education.

A qualitative research methodology using in-depth unstructured interviews, underpinned by critical realism.

While the ALOs sampled have developed strategies to resist the impact of neoliberalism, they are also struggling to sustain their resistance and nurture access to emancipatory and transformative adult literacy practices.

The research is limited in size, being a small sample study of ten ALOs.

The research will inform policy discussions in advance of the new further education and training strategy, where adult literacy policy is situated.

The paper gives unique and independent access to the voices of ALOs in Ireland and provides a small example of empirical evidence of the commodification and marketisation of adult literacy under neoliberalism.

This chapter explores the work of a library adult literacy programme working closely with other education providers in Risdon Prison in Australia. The Literacy Service operates as a form of outreach to the prison population who have low literacy levels and are not yet engaged in education or using the prison library. In this context, it is a form of radical inclusion, creating opportunities for those most disadvantaged to access learning. The library services help to create a literate environment for prisoners and provide opportunities for prisoners to increase their engagement in lifelong learning and everyday literacy practices, giving them a better chance of developing their literacy skills. Strategies explored for engaging this cohort include a range of creative projects, small group work and one to one tutoring. The Literacy Service has developed best practice approaches to deliver effective literacy support using strategies and approaches that align with research and these are adapted for work in the prison context. The Literacy Service approach is aligned with the wider prison goals of rehabilitation and reintegration and the chapter explores a theory of change to identify how prison education may be most effective in supporting rehabilitation (Szifris, Fox, & Bradbury, 2018). The library Literacy Service offers safe spaces, opportunities to create social bonds, reshape identity, engage in informal learning and set new goals – key elements found to be critical in rehabilitation. The Prison Library Impact Framework, developed by Finlay and Bates (2018), connects these elements with the theory of change model to propose a tool that may be useful to evaluate prison library services in the future.

In the United Kingdom, partnership is increasingly a requirement of public sector funding. Such partnerships, formed strategically to win government contracts, can prove brittle; collaboration is often superficial. This chapter explores how a consortium of Scottish higher, further and adult education institutions, assembled expediently to respond to a contract arising from a Scottish Government strategy for adult literacies, nevertheless became genuinely collaborative. In the course of a six-year project to develop new professional qualifications for adult literacies tutors, a core group within the consortium developed a resilient affiliation able to lever advantage within individual institutions from its association. Its intentionality and readiness to transgress boundaries in the face of institutional obstacles were grounded in a shared pedagogical perspective. We examine how common understandings and shared objectives were forged in a series of critical incidents. The territorialism that often inhibits genuine collaboration was weakened in the face of the allegiances precipitated by these incidents. The virtual learning environment, as a shared boundary object, facilitated the negotiation of interinstitutional collaboration. We conclude that critical incidents and boundary objects can be planned into partnership working to build trust through exposure to risk and vulnerability.

Fabricated data jeopardize the reliability of large-scale population surveys and reduce the comparability of such efforts by destroying the linkage between data and measurement constructs. Such data result in the loss of comparability across participating countries and, in the case of cyclical surveys, between past and present surveys. This paper aims to describe how data fabrication can be understood in the context of the complex processes involved in the collection, handling, submission and analysis of large-scale assessment data. The actors involved in those processes, and their possible motivations for data fabrication, are also elaborated.

Computer-based assessments produce new types of information that enable us to detect the possibility of data fabrication, and therefore the need for further investigation and analysis. The paper presents three examples that illustrate how data fabrication was identified and documented in the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and discusses the resulting remediation efforts.

For two countries that participated in the first round of PIAAC, the data showed a subset of interviewers who handled many more cases than others. In Case 1, the average proficiency for respondents in those interviewers’ caseloads was much higher than expected and included many duplicate response patterns. In Case 2, anomalous response patterns were identified. Case 3 presents findings based on data analyses for one PISA country, where results for human-coded responses were shown to be highly inflated compared to past results.

This paper shows how new sources of data, such as timing information collected in computer-based assessments, can be combined with other traditional sources to detect fabrication.

This study aims to examine how well print‐literacy support being provided to New Zealand Modern Apprentices (MAs) is supporting their study and practical work.

The authors undertook a qualitative analysis of a database of 191 MAs in the literacy programme, then in 14 case studies completed 46 interviews with MAs, their employers, industry coordinators and adult literacy tutors to obtain triangulated insights into each MA's learning.

A strong sense of disjunction appeared between the work culture and the norms of being print literate which adult literacy tutors worked to draw apprentices into. Interviewees perceived a divide between practice and theory, or “doing the job” and “doing bookwork”, so that MAs were faced with trying to be two different kinds of people to succeed in their apprenticeship.

Future research may explore the ways in which differing value‐sets that apprentices encounter can compete with and undermine creation of knowledge and skills.

Desirably, apprentices' literacy tutors should possess sufficient familiarity with trade terminology and practices to help bridge the divide between trade and print‐literate assumptions and values to the extent possible.

This study questions Lave and Wenger's assumption that mastering knowledge and skill requires newcomers to participate fully within their community of practice. It proposes instead that varying values, which apprentices must come to grips with need to be better aligned with one another.

Learning them literacy Gordon Oakes, Minister of State, Department of Education & Science, speaking at the Adult Literacy Unit Conference held recently in London

The purpose of this paper is to estimate those variables which have significant impact on the food security in a developing country such as Pakistan. The matter of food security in rural areas is of immense nature and needs to be probed. A number of factors are responsible for the situation. The current paper examines the determinants of three aspects of food security in rural areas of Pakistan, i.e. food availability, accessibility and absorption.

To estimate the determinants of each component, a series of models is created, in which each component of food security is a function of socio‐economic variables. Ordinary least square regression is used to estimate the coefficients.

It has been observed from the results that the production of wheat, rice, maize, pulses, oilseeds, poultry meat and fish at the district level is found to affect food availability positively. All the district, except Sindh, is more probable to be food insecure in availability. In the food accessibility, electrification and adult literacy emerged as the factors having negative effect. Child immunization, safe drinking water and number of hospitals have shown positive effect on food absorption.

This is a first study which measures the determinants of three aspects of food security in rural areas of a developing country such as Pakistan, i.e. food availability, accessibility and absorption. This study provides a new road map for the next studies.

The paper guides the policy makers and experts, showing how they are able to minimize the disparity among the different regions of a developing country such as Pakistan.

The paper will help to minimize the social disparity among the different segments of a developing country, especially in the rural areas, which is the most neglected part in most of the developing countries.

The paper presents the first study of its nature which has been conducted in Pakistan.

Investment in human development is considered a means of improving the quality of life and sustaining economic growth in the Caribbean. The purpose of this paper is to assess the efficacy of public spending on health care and education by evaluating the life expectancy and school enrolment rates of these countries.

Using a data set containing 19 Caribbean countries over the period 1995 to 2007 for health care and 1980 to 2009 for education, a Panel Ordinary Least Squares model was employed.

The results revealed that health expenditure has a significant positive effect on health status, while spending on education has no appreciable influence on either primary or secondary school enrolment.

Unlike previous Caribbean research, the paper explores a variable for quality in the education system, that is, the pupil‐teacher ratio. It also seeks to update the existing Caribbean literature by employing data from 1980 to 2009.

The greatest deprivations are permanent ill‐health, illiteracy and innumeracy, not the ones regularly mouthed by the trendy lobbies of our age. The Government is determined to do all it can to cut down illiteracy and innumeracy. Men and women who cannot read, write and number suffer continued isolation. They cannot read the papers, apply for jobs, hold down employment, or take a full part in society. It is estimated that we have some two million adult illiterates and semi‐literates in our midst. Much has already been done by the BBC, local authorities, voluntary bodies, and the former Adult Literacy Resource Agency and Adult Literacy Unit. Some 70,000 adult illiterates a year have received tuition over the last five years. But many dropped in and out of classes, so we can only claim to have touched the tip of the iceberg. As we melted the tip, the ice‐berg was being added to by those school‐leavers who needed help.