When the pandemic began, Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) providers worried about equity gaps in digital access for low-level and English language learners. Working with AEFLA programs, Tyson Foods implemented low-cost solutions to facilitate digital and remote access in its workplace literacy classes hosted in plants across the…

The purpose of our study was to discover who researches functional literacy. This study was situated within a larger systematic literature review. We searched seven electronic databases and identified 90 sources to answer our larger question regarding how functional literacy is defined and conceptualized as well as the specific question pertinent…

The dominant discourse on adult literacy and numeracy in Australia sees the federal government, industry, workforce skills agencies and the media speaking with one voice on the "crisis" involving workers' low literacy and numeracy skills. Underpinning this discourse are the Australian results of the international Adult Literacy and Life…

Many Western governments are looking to workplace literacy, language, and numeracy programs to address general skill improvement with a longterm aim of improving labor productivity. Rigorous research on these programs' effectiveness for both of these agendas, however, remains sparse and limited in scope. This article reports the findings of an…

This paper examines the degree to which British adults participating in workplace literacy courses improved their reading comprehension skills, using longitudinal data which cover the period from enrolment until between two and three years later. Learners were tested using an instrument designed explicitly for adults, with two parallel forms. For…

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…

This article discusses the results of funded research that investigated how an industry training organisation in Aotearoa New Zealand embeds literacy in the workplace. Results confirm a "common-sense view" that there is not one right way to embed workplace literacy. They also reveal a number of findings about what works effectively when…

This paper gathers descriptions on the use of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) and essential skills cross Canada. IALS was developed as a population measure to lay out the distribution of skills and their relationship to other social and economic attributes. The information was taken from federal, provincial, and territorial…

This paper explores exclusion and equality through critical theory, in the context of adult literacy provision in Ireland, by investigating the sites of exclusion that exist for a group of five male adult literacy learners. A summary review of literacy theories, exclusion and equality is provided framing the reporting of data from this…

This study grew out of the realization that implicit literacy expectations between working class United Auto Workers (UAW) staff and professional class staff were complicating the filling out and filing of a position audit form. Professional class supervisors had designed the form as a measure of fairness, in that each UAW employee on campus was…

This literature review provides an overview of the main lines of discussion and enquiry around social capital and adult learning and literacy. It was written as a background paper for "The Centre for Literacy's 2010 Summer Institute" on workplace literacy and essential skills (LES). The Institute focus was "what…

Australia appears to be in the grip of a "literacy crisis" in workplaces. Media reports and industry/skills organisations are decrying the low literacy and numeracy levels of workers and the negative effects these have on productivity. As a consequence, the Australian government has increased funding for workplace literacy and numeracy…

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 report comes from a three-year program of research, "Securing Their Future: Older Workers and the Role of VET." Previous work from the program looked at how well workers were matched to their jobs, based on their literacy and numeracy skills and the use of these skills in the workplace. In a continuation of that work, the research…

Governments and other stakeholders have become increasingly interested in assessing the skills of their adult populations in order to examine how well prepared they are to meet the challenges of the modern knowledge-based society. The current paper provides a conceptual framework for the assessment of reading component skills in the OECD's…