The focus of this paper is adult literacy, and the impact this has on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individual and community health. It directs attention to those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people and adults who have not benefited from the formal school education system, and who, as a consequence, have very low levels of…

The aim of this article is to analyse the development of adult literacy education in Turkey in a historical and political context. The development of adult literacy education is studied in three different historical periods. To spread literacy and create novel institutions, although these institutions were closed later, played a critical role in…

This study investigated the effectiveness of cognitive strategy instruction in writing with adult literacy learners. Three middle-aged African-American adults participating in adult education with the goal of passing the GED received tutoring in a strategy for planning, writing, and revising persuasive essays along with self-regulation strategies.…

In many adult literacy programs around the country, instruction emphasizes reading, but equal time is not given to the development of writing skills. Adult students are often reluctant to expose the difficulties they have with writing, difficulties which will be painfully apparent when they do write. With students who are reluctant to write,…

Reading is theorised as a key aspect of one's educational and vocational adjustment. The reading scores on the "Wide-Range Achievement Test 3" of 465 adult vocational assessment clients were examined. Reading varied across a range of social factors and the overall results were consistent with earlier studies, especially the "Adult…

This study examined the reliability and validity of administering Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) to adult basic education (ABE) students. Ninety ABE participants were administered DIBELS measures, the Woodcock-Johnson III Broad Reading (WJ III BR) measures, and four orthographic ability tests. Since ABE students are a…

This article draws on ethnographic research to examine relationships between literacy and identity for newly literate men and women in the southern African country of Botswana. Situating beliefs about literacy in the intersection of evangelical missionary discourse, colonial-era labor practices, and modernity rhetoric, I argue that literacy is…

This dissertation focuses on the educational aspirations and expectations of a heterogeneous group of women who were enrolled in, or had graduated from, adult education and literacy programs in Boston, Massachusetts. The research questions guiding the inquiry are: (1) Why do educationally disadvantaged women value education--how are these values…

"Literacy Practices in Transition" explores the connections between local, situated literacy practices and global processes of mobility in the geographical space of the Nordic countries, an example of contemporary mobile societies. The detailed empirical analyses show how these connections affect individuals, practices and policies; how…

Examining costs and savings associated with moving every Canadian with a Literacy Level 1 or 2 (on the international literacy scale) to Level 3, this analysis is based upon statistically matched data from the "2003 International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey and the 2005-2009 Surveys of Labour and Income Dynamics." The methods provide…

The "Comparative Indicators of Education" report series has been published on a biennial basis since it began in 2002, although this year's is the first to expand its focus to the G-20 countries, having previously been focused on the G-8 countries. "Comparative Indicators of Education in the United States and Other G-20 Countries:…

This paper and the four commissioned works on which it is based are guided by the important question: How can we start valuing practices and outcomes of teaching and learning that are difficult to reduce to numbers? As the process of developing indicators for the Post-2015 education targets unfolds, some of the targets are at risk of being dropped…

There are many readability tools that instructors can use to help adult learners select reading materials. We describe and compare different types of readability tools: formulas calculated by hand, tools found on the Web, tools embedded in a word processing program, and readability tools found in a commercial software program. Practitioners do not…

This article presents data on the types and duration of reading-related activities reported by a volunteer sample of 400 adults (demographically similar to the U.S. adult population age 20 and older in terms of race, ethnicity, education, and working status) in the 2005 Real-World Tasks Study. This diary study revealed that adults spent, on…

This article has two purposes. At the theoretical level it is intended to contribute to debates about how learning happens over time. At the methodological level it is intended to suggest how a complex understanding of time can enrich both ethnographic methods and linguistic analysis. It uses the concept of timescapes to interpret ethnographic and…