Discusses the National Literacy Mission (NLM) launched in 1988 in India. Notes the barriers to successful campaigns for literacy in India. Describes the reasons for the particularly successful campaign in the state of Kerala, including the fact that it was in every sense a people's campaign. (SR)

This review of "Push," a novel about a young single mother in a literacy education program, incorporates theoretical elements from Allan Quigley's "Rethinking Literacy Education." The review addresses issues of stereotypes, humanistic education, and advocacy and includes reflections on teaching philosophy in adult basic…

Outlines problems in Australian adult literacy policy; considers whether policy perverts or perfects democracy. Concludes that workable policy offers a conjunction of information, ideology, and interests. (SK)

Traces the history of volunteer literacy tutoring in Queensland. Addresses contemporary issues arising from national training initiatives: funding, changes in the volunteer population, ideology, and the attempt to link literacy skills to employment outcomes. (SK)

Compares spelling errors of 195 child and 124 adult literacy learners. Finds a similar developmental pattern occurring in both child and adult spellers especially at the early spelling levels; and that adults were better at identifying visual patterns and understanding some word concepts. Lends support to the theory that adult spelling…

A test measuring document, prose, and quantitative literacy of out-of-school youth in Guyana found that only 11% had high levels of functional literacy, a literacy rate much lower than usually reported. Failure to represent the situation accurately prolongs the lack of political will to deal with the issue. (SK)

Compares three perspectives on contextual literacy and gives examples of program settings with which each is philosophically congruent: (1) literacy as social practices, focused on use in daily life; (2) functional context literacy, mastery of concrete tasks embedded in environments; and (3) critical literacy, analysis of oppression and use of…

This paper charts the emergence of community publishing and worker writer groups in England in the early 1970s. These workshops supported working class and marginalized people to express their personal experience through poetry, prose, autobiography and history, a process with significant educational, cultural, political and social implications.…

Literacy has become an important predictor of well being in old age. Being literate in today's society demands a myriad of functional abilities, which, when absent, can have dramatic health, economic, and social consequences. The purpose of this study was to develop a framework for defining literacy within an increasingly technological society,…

Literacy has become an important predictor of well being in old age. Being literate in today's society demands a myriad of functional abilities, which, when absent, can have dramatic health, economic, and social consequences. The purpose of this study was to develop a framework for defining literacy within an increasingly technological society,…

In 2003 the National Literacy Secretariat (NLS) of Canada, at that time a branch of the Department of Human Resources and Development Canada, decided to review its research function. This article discusses some of the questions the review raised for the field. Many of these issues are to do with the management of knowledge--what research gets…

Because of the important role played by community learning providers, Premier Ed Stelmach asked Canadian Minister of Advanced Education and Technology to increase support for community education and literacy programs. Community Adult Learning Councils and other community providers of adult literacy and family literacy programming are primarily…

Research suggests that technology use among adult literacy students has positive effects on learning outcomes, with the majority of these studies focused on traditional classroom environments where technology is used as a supplement to existing instruction. Adult literacy students are affected in many ways by technology use within less structured…

Focusing on students' responses to an 1876 writing assignment at Illinois Industrial University (which would ultimately become the University of Illinois), the author analyzes ideological tensions that occurred as the United States found itself revising the pastoral image of the farmer in an increasingly industrial age. (Contains 9 notes.)

A large proportion of the UK adult population has very poor literacy and/or numeracy skills (see the 1999 Moser Report, the 2003 "Skills for Life" Survey and the 2006 Leitch report). In 1999, the Moser report found that approximately 20% of adults in England had severe literacy difficulties, whilst around 40% had some numeracy problems.…