The Wiley Handbook of Adult Literacy


Book Description

Examines the widespread phenomenon of poor literacy skills in adults across the globe This handbook presents a wide range of research on adults who have low literacy skills. It looks at the cognitive, affective, and motivational factors underlying adult literacy; adult literacy in different countries; and the educational approaches being taken to help improve adults' literacy skills. It includes not only adults enrolled in adult literacy programs, but postsecondary students with low literacy skills, some of whom have reading disabilities. The first section of The Wiley Handbook of Adult Literacy covers issues such as phonological abilities in adults who have not yet learned to read; gender differences in the reading motivation of adults with low literacy skills; literacy skills, academic self-efficacy, and participation in prison education; and more. Chapters on adult literacy, social change and sociocultural factors in South Asia and in Ghana; literacy, numeracy, and self-rated health among U.S. adults; adult literacy programs in Southeastern Europe and Turkey, and a review of family and workplace literacy programs are among the topics featured in the second section. The last part examines how to teach reading and writing to adults with low skills; adults' transition from secondary to postsecondary education; implications for policy, research, and practice in the adult education field; educational technologies that support reading comprehension; and more. Looks at the cognitive processing challenges associated with low literacy in adults Features contributions from a global team of experts in the field Offers writing strategy instruction for low-skilled postsecondary students The Wiley Handbook of Adult Literacy is an excellent book for academic researchers, teacher educators, professional developers, program designers, and graduate students. It's also beneficial to curriculum developers, adult basic education and developmental education instructors, and program administrators, as well as clinicians and counselors who provide services to adults with reading disabilities.




Adult Literacy and Development


Book Description

Of great importance for international practitioners, students, researchers, and policy makers alike, this book brings together adult learning and anthropology and introduces a picture of the world of adult literacy today; explores relationships between the teaching and learning of literacy and numeracy, and literacy practices in daily life.




EBOOK: Adult Literacy, Numeracy and Language: Policy, Practice and Research


Book Description

This book explores the social practice of literacy, numeracy and language and its implications for teaching and learning adult basic skills. Leading international experts argue that literacy, numeracy and language are more than just a set of skills or techniques, but are shaped by the social and cultural context within which they are taking place; the meanings they have for users; and the purposes they serve. This shifts the focus from a narrow, functional and externally imposed definition of literacy, numeracy and language learning, to more open and numerous definitions that focus on what people do with their knowledge, understanding and skills in a range of contexts. Adult Literacy, Numeracy and Language shows how the social practice approach to learning and teaching can be used to develop more inclusive views of adult literacy, numeracy and language. Bringing together the views of researchers, policy makers and practitioners, it helps readers to develop an understanding of contemporary policy developments and encourages them to examine their own practice as adult basic education teachers, in order to respond more effectively to the needs of their students. This book is a valuable resource for practitioners, researchers and students on courses in adult and continuing education (particularly basic skills), postgraduate students, and researchers in the field of post-compulsory education.




Improving Adult Literacy Instruction


Book Description

A high level of literacy in both print and digital media is required for negotiating most aspects of 21st-century life, including supporting a family, education, health, civic participation, and competitiveness in the global economy. Yet, more than 90 million U.S. adults lack adequate literacy. Furthermore, only 38 percent of U.S. 12th graders are at or above proficient in reading. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction synthesizes the research on literacy and learning to improve literacy instruction in the United States and to recommend a more systemic approach to research, practice, and policy. The book focuses on individuals ages 16 and older who are not in K-12 education. It identifies factors that affect literacy development in adolescence and adulthood in general, and examines their implications for strengthening literacy instruction for this population. It also discusses technologies for learning that can assist with multiple aspects of teaching, assessment,and accommodations for learning. There is inadequate knowledge about effective instructional practices and a need for better assessment and ongoing monitoring of adult students' proficiencies, weaknesses, instructional environments, and progress, which might guide instructional planning. Improving Adult Literacy Instruction recommends a program of research and innovation to validate, identify the boundaries of, and extend current knowledge to improve instruction for adults and adolescents outside school. The book is a valuable resource for curriculum developers, federal agencies such as the Department of Education, administrators, educators, and funding agencies.




Learning with Adults


Book Description

This anthology brings together some of the finest writers on different aspects of adult education and related areas to provide a complementary reader to the introductory text by Leona English and Peter Mayo Learning with Adults: A Critical Introduction. Areas tackled include Disability, Prisons, Third Age Universities, Lifelong Learning Policy, Learning Society, Poverty, LGBTQ, Sport, Women, Literacy, Transformative Learning, Community Arts, Aesthetics, Consumption, Migration, Libraries, Folk High Schools, Adult Education Policy, Subaltern Southern Social Movements, Social Creation, Community Radio, Social Film. Contexts focused on include Africa, Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, Asia (India), small island states. Over thirty authors involved including Zygmunt Bauman, Rosa Maria Torres, Oskar Negt, Antonia Darder, Jim Elmborg, D. W. Livingstone, Palle Rasmussen, Mae Shaw, Leona English, Asoke Bhattacharya, Cynthia L. Pemberton, Eileen Casey White, Daniel Schugurensky, Dip Kapoor, Peter Rule, John Myers, Joseph Giordmaina, Antonia De Vita, Alexis Kokkos, Marvin Formosa, Carmel Borg, Julia Preece, Patricia Cranton, Lyn Tett, Ali A. Abdi, Anna Maria Piussi, Behrang Foroughi, Taadi Ruth Modipa, Robert Hill, Edward Shiza, Kaela Jubas and Didacus Jules. ... Learning with Adults: A Reader constitutes the most valuable practical and theoretical reflection on adult education I have seen in a long time. Nelly P. Stromquist, Professor, International Education Policy, College of Education University of Maryland, College Park ... This book provides an opportunity at a very appropriate moment to discuss adult education issues during challenging times. Paula Guimarães, University of Lisbon ... Read and savour delights and surprises. Michael Welton, UBC and Athabasca University This book satisfies everything one could desire of a reader on the subject. Kenneth Wain, University of Malta




Literacy in the Lives of Working-Class Adults in Australia


Book Description

Adopting a 'social practice' approach to literacy research based on ethnographic methods, this book provides a strong critique of dominant understandings of the role of literacy in the lives of adults in Australia. It explores how groups of working-class adults can manage the literacy practices of their everyday lives by drawing on social networks of support. It is based on research conducted by the author over a forty-year career in adult literacy education, featuring the voices of varied adult groups, including: prisoners, the long-term unemployed, local council workers, manufacturing workers, adult literacy students, marginalised young people, vocational students, and patients living with a chronic illness (type 2 diabetes). Each chapter explains how dominant society views these adult groups in relation to literacy, and provides a qualitative examination at the local level of how members of these groups manage the literacy practices of their everyday lives.




Adult Education and Difference


Book Description

The world ecological system is marked by difference throughout. There is social difference with different identities, shifting and transmuting, being forged, and extra-human differences. All these have implications for intra human and human/non-human earth relations. This aspect is not always recognised and valorised. Education, though not an independent variable, still can be mobilised, together with other sources of potential transformation, to redress this situation marked by aggressions, micro and macro, inertia and indifference. It represents a number of immediate challenges for Adult Education. This compendium is intended as a useful resource in this regard. It maps out a kaleidoscope of myriad differences and suggests options for overcoming the various obstacles that stand opposed to those who seek fulfilment in the way they are discursively located. The obstacles are a dent on efforts to living in communion with the rest of the cosmos. The utopian view is that of different species living in harmony with each other. This book emphasises social/ecological justice, intersectionality and relationality as the targets for Adult Education in this relatively still new millennium. Contributors are: Sharifah Salmah Binti Abdullah, Thi Bogossian, Lauren Bouttell, Lidiane Nunes de Castro, Anyela Nathalie Gomez Deantonio, Preeti Dagar, Raquel Galeano Giminez, Ksenija Joksimović, Kainat Khurshid, Robert Livingston, Peter Mayo, Sonia Medel, Yunah Park, Zainab Sa’id Sa’ad, Bonnie Slade, Gameli Kodzo Tordzro, Agnieszka Uflewska and Aisara Yessenova.




Adult Literacy and New Technologies


Book Description

Technology offers a promising alternative to the labor-intensive, tutorial-based teaching that makes up the bulk of today's literacy training. This technology, which includes multimedia (speech, video, and graphics), and telecommunications, offers new hope to those who have failed in paper-&-pencil educational activities. The report estimates that at least 35 million adults have difficulties with common literacy skills. Over 80 charts, tables and photos. Glossary.




Adult and Lifelong Education


Book Description

Adult and Lifelong Education explores why politicians, researchers, and practitioners involved in educating post-school young people and adults have quietly abandoned the term ‘education’ in favour of ‘learning’. Bringing together contributions from experienced as well as younger scholars, and from Europe, North America, and Australasia, it draws on global, national, and local perspectives to reveal key features of adult education’s policy environment. At the book’s heart are three main concerns. First, what is the spatial reach of these developments, and what processes of fluidity and fixity emerge? Second, does increased state and international recognition of civil society’s role in adult education and learning help to voice grass-roots learning needs for individuals and communities? Or does it create new patterns of dependency and ‘domestication’? Finally, given the growing culture of monitoring, and the investment – of money, time and attention – which international organizations, national governments, and research institutes around the world are making in gathering information on people’s skills and knowledge, and how they use them, what is happening when literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving abilities are tested? How is this knowledge used – and abused – in various policy environments, and who benefits? The book is an outcome of the work of the European Society for the Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA) Research Network on Policy Studies in Adult Education’s inaugural conference, held at the University of Nottingham in 2012. This book was originally published as a special issue of Globalisation, Societies and Education.




Oral Literacies


Book Description

This is the first book to focus exclusively on an examination of early 21st-century adult reading aloud. The dominant contemporary image of reading in much of the world is that of a silent, solitary activity. This book challenges this dominant discourse, acknowledging the diversity of reading practices that adults perform or experience in different communities, languages, contexts and phases of our lives, outlining potential educational implications and next steps for literacy teaching and research. By documenting and analysing the diversity of oral reading practices that adults take part in (on- and offline), this book explores contemporary reading aloud as hugely varied, often invisible and yet quietly ubiquitous. Duncan discusses questions such as: What, where, how and why do adults read aloud, or listen to others reading? How do couples, families and groups use oral reading as a way of being together? When and why do adults read aloud at work? And why do some people read aloud in languages they may not speak or understand? This book is key reading for advanced students, researchers and scholars of literacy practices and literacy education within education, applied linguistics and related areas.