In May 1993, 1,060 people in England and Wales were surveyed on the use of basic skills in everyday life. Data obtained from these questionnaires were weighted to reflect the demographic profile of the population in terms of age, gender, working status, and social class. Interviewees were asked 40 questions about activities they had done in the 7…

These four issues of the quarterly publication of the Saskatchewan Literacy Network in Canada are each devoted to a separate aspect of literacy and literacy education. In addition to an editorial and series of articles on the issue topic, each issue includes book reviews and network news. Some issues also include interviews and annotated…

This curriculum includes outlines for a series of professional readiness courses designed to improve the various basic skills required of hospital personnel. The first eight sections consist of course outlines/materials on the following topics: user-friendly arithmetic, user-friendly fractions, user-friendly algebra, problem solving through…

This publication contains the three numeracy units of the three levels of Support Materials for Agricultural Training (SMAT) in agricultural production: Level 1 (starting), 2 (continuing), and 3 (completing). The units are designed to help the learner improve his or her numeracy skills needed to deal with agricultural production. SMAT materials…

In the UK, there is a marked gender gap in the educational attainment of boys and girls. At the end of compulsory education, 10 per cent fewer boys achieve 5 or more good GCSEs. This gap is by no means confined to GCSE. It is evident at all Key Stages. Furthermore, some indicators suggest that the gap has widened over time. In this paper, we…

The 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) evaluated students' understanding of mathematics concepts and their ability to apply mathematics to everyday situations. Students demonstrated their knowledge of these critical skills by responding to questions about number properties and operations, measurement, geometry, data analysis…

The Education Watch initiative is being implemented in the Solomon Islands by the Coalition on Education Solomon Islands (COESI) in partnership with Asian South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education (ASPBAE). COESI aims to generate a reliable body of information that will: (1) Accurately explain how much the national government has done and can do to…

"Pots of Gold" is a family finance research project delivered within Sure Start Children's Centre areas across Newcastle. It is funded by the DfES through the Basic Skills Agency and managed by Newcastle Family Learning Service. This project has been delivered in two phases, running from October 2005 to December 2006. Phase 1 ran from…

A literature review examined the relationship of adults' verbal and mathematical literacy to employers' investments in training, employee wages, unemployment probabilities, unemployment duration, technological change, productivity, and economic growth. Most of the publications analyzed dealt with the United States. The analysis revealed that…

A discussion of numeracy (the ability to cope confidently with the mathematical demands of everyday life), focuses on provision of numeracy instruction alongside English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction for learners with low literacy skills. It looks first at considerations and methods for assessing student numeracy needs, including the…

After 10 years of teaching rule-driven, procedure-based, algorithm-oriented mathematics, an elementary teacher describes how she began to rethink her teaching style after returning to school for a graduate degree. Her rethinking is based on the first of four student teaching events that spanned an entire school year in which she used the…

Although adult numeracy or basic mathematics classes have existed throughout Australia since at least the 1970s, they did not receive prominence in provision or policy until the endorsement of the Australian Language and Literacy Policy in 1991. The following are still lacking, however: expectation that adult numeracy teachers will have formal…

This document consists of four issues of this serial issued during 1993. They contain articles of interest to those teaching, funding, and organizing programs in adult literacy, second language, and baskc skills. Issue number 48 consists of these six articles: "So You Thought You Had Funding for ESOL [English for Speakers of Other…

Project TIP (Tyson Improvement Program) was undertaken in 1992 to provide basic and job-specific skills training to current employees of Tyson Foods. The workplace literacy program, which was jointly developed by staff from Wallace State College in Hanceville, Alabama, and Tyson Foods, was designed to be presented to Tyson employees at five…

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) covered five different grade levels, with more than 40 countries collecting data in more than 30 different languages. More than a million students were tested. The present report contains the TIMSS results for students in the final year of secondary school. Mathematics and science…