Through Target 4.7 of SDG4 on 'quality education', Agenda 2030 invites governments to take ownership of progress towards ensuring 'Education for Sustainable Development' (ESD) becomes embedded into all levels of education. However, conceptual analysis suggests an ongoing blindspot related to the significance of systems literacy in fostering the…

This article deals with problematic fields which influence the level of reading strategies of fifteen to nineteen years old pupils (e.g. selected productive learning activities, work with diverse types of texts and information sources etc.). Moreover, the paper provides information about efficiency testing of pupils in selected reading strategies…

Migrant and seasonal farmworkers are typically Spanish-speaking, Latino immigrants with limited formal education and low literacy skills and, as such, are a vulnerable population. We describe the development of the "Pesticides and Farmworker Health Toolkit", a pesticide safety and health curriculum designed to communicate to farmworkers…

Attainment of functional English literacy skills by all students has been a focus of Australian national policy since the 1989 Hobart Declaration (MCEETYA, 1989). This focus underpins current educational accountability policy enacted through the National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). The Adelaide and Melbourne Declarations…

The author suggests that the specification of common literacy demands that are valid on the societal level, that is, which are applicable and meaningful to diverse adults living in diverse environments, is an impossible task. He further suggests that the development of a valid and uniform national curriculum for functional literacy is equally…

Describes functional literacy for those interested in office-based occupations. Components of office literacy include computer and cultural literacy, as well as reading skills. Offers six propositions that have implications for office literacy curriculum development. (CH)

Surveys the five literacy crises that have occurred since the Civil War. Argues that the widespread perception that a serious literacy problem exists in this country today cannot be supported either by international or historical comparisons of achievement. (SRT)

Argues that national policy has imposed on American public education four different standards of literacy, each one more demanding than the one preceding it--signature, recitation, comprehension, and application. Suggests, also, that each standard, which had its root cause in the nation's economy and social structure, was initially applied only to…

Discusses recent curricular and instructional reforms, collectively called basic skills restructuring, that have developed in urban schools. Discusses these reforms as a response to various crisis tendencies in the operation of schools by dominant power groups. Discusses the causes and effects of top-down curricular reform initiatives. (JS)

Discussion of literacy for the twenty-first century focuses on the Norristown (Pennsylvania) Area School District (NASD), where a restructured curriculum stresses thinking and communication skills. Sidebars introduce electronic books, recommend language learning software, describe six state literacy reform initiatives, and describe professional…