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…

Twenty-five years after the seminal report "A Nation at Risk," American education remains in a state of crisis. Millions of students continue to pass through the public schools without mastering basic skills and knowledge. Policymakers and the public must recognize both this persistent failure and the attendant need for systemic reform…

This study examined how poverty and residential mobility influence low-income adults' persistence in family literacy programs in Pennsylvania. Twelve out of 20 program directors reported that learners typically moved at least once a year. In five of these high-mobility programs moving was reported to significantly hinder persistence. Geographic…

This is a critical review of methodological issues in the evaluation of adult literacy education programs in the United States. It addresses the key research questions: What are the appropriate methods for evaluating these programs under given circumstances. It identifies 15 evaluation studies that are representative of a range of adult literacy…

Research and development on formative assessment has paid little attention to part-time adult basic education in informal community-based settings. A three-year project funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the National Research Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy, and the Quality Improvement Agency addresses that gap in vocational and…

The 11th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2018) is held under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society at the Templeton Landing in Buffalo, New York. This year's EDM conference was highly competitive, with 145 long and short paper submissions. Of these, 23 were accepted as full papers and 37…

The U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics has updated the household and prison public-use data files for the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy and the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey. The accompanying 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy Public-Use Data File User's Guide explains how the data…

When floodwater swept through the McVities biscuit factory in Carlisle in January 2005 few were confident that it would reopen. The factory, in the Caldewgate area of the city, was one of the first casualties of the flood, as water, nine feet deep in places, coursed trough the food preparation areas, destroying equipment and covering everything in…

This study addresses the primary question, "What instructional approaches typify adult literacy education in the United States?" as well as several secondary questions. To address the primary question, a survey was developed and responses were received from 598 adult literacy teachers in 12 states. When the data were subjected to factor analysis,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate adult literacy education learners' self-esteem and to examine the relationship between self-esteem and measures of achievement in reading and math. The rationale for the present study stemmed from the lack of research into adult literacy students' self-esteem levels. More than 200 learners enrolled in…

This article examines the relationship between shame, literacy and social relations by analyzing shame narratives told to the author by youth and adult literacy students during a 24-month ethnographic research project conducted in two Brazilian cities. Employing Bourdieu's theoretical framework and literature from the anthropology of emotions, the…