This article emphasizes the importance of understanding local contexts to provide appropriate education for teachers about literacy instruction. The author reviews general problems that follow from extrapolating from unrepresentative research samples and the errors and deficit conceptions that follow from assuming that all cognition takes place…

In Denmark, the welfare system has evened out the gaps between rich and poor. Schools and child care settings all over the country have an equal level of resources provided by the state, and are financed through taxes. Schools and child care settings in areas with families of lower socioeconomic status (SES) get extra money and resources. All…

This article provides a critical review of popular models for literacy pedagogy with regard for the needs of low-literacy refugee-background students. We argue that in a context of high linguistic diversity there is a need to re-evaluate teaching practices and curriculum in a way that is more responsive to difference and which pays closer…

At the general presentation of the 48th session of the International Conference on Education, "Inclusive Education: The Way of the Future", a "holistic" approach was advocated to improve educational opportunities for children who are excluded from an equal education and adults who are illiterate. The first part of this paper argues that a more…

Internationally, a move towards inclusive education has been adopted as the preferred model in most education systems. Yet there are still many jurisdictions that find that they simply do not have the resources necessary to embark on such a major development as inclusion. A critical issue in many such regions has been the difficulty in reforming…

There are no official data, but it is estimated that four million adults in Germany have little or no reading, writing and numeracy skills, so that they are known as "functionally illiterate". This is a fact which was long ignored. In this contribution, literacy activities and research in Germany are analysed through a human rights-based…

Cautions against the common tendency to find in illiteracy an explanation for poverty, unemployment, disease, and hopelessness. Argues that to solve a pressing social problem it must be described correctly, and that social problems are solved by providing opportunities. (SR)

Subtractive education through the medium of a dominant language often transfers Indigenous and minority (IM) children to the dominant group linguistically and culturally within one or two generations. It may lead to the extinction of Indigenous languages, thus contributing to the disappearance of the world's linguistic diversity. A partial result…

Some of the many topics which challenge psychologists working in the literacy field are: (1) the priority that should be attached to illiteracy in relationship to other national and personal problems; (2) varying definitions of "literacy" and "illiteracy" that inhibit communication and generalization; (3) the lack of valid and…

As many as 70 million Americans are functionally or marginally illiterate. Among the consequences: disproportionate numbers of illiterates are unemployed, 50 percent of inmates are illiterate, and illiterate parents are more likely to raise illiterate children. (SK)

Dispels several myths: literacy leads to greater equality, literacy and orality are distinct, and literacy is superior to orality. Gives examples of oral literature traditions that are a rich resource upon which literacy workers should draw. (SK)

Traces the changes in policy towards illiteracy in Pakistan from 1947-1987. Notes changes in the definition of literacy and the changes in emphases and objectives in policy statements. Suggests why the problem of illiteracy has not been solved. (JOW)

Definitions of literacy necessarily express a social relationship between self and other, projecting the way literate members of society wish to relate to those considered illiterate. This essay questions current definitions of the "illiterate other". (Author/LHW)

Critique of an earlier issue "Education as Transformation: Identity, Change, and Development" (see EJ 245 279-284), which was devoted to the role of education in Third World development. Asserts that the problems of the Third World still exist within the First. (JOW)

Discusses the dimensions of the illiteracy problem among adults in the United States and suggests the role libraries and librarians could play in resolving it. (JD)