Adult Literacy Essay ⋆ Essays on Controversial Topics ⋆ EssayEmpire

Adult literacy is an adult’s ability to read, write, listen, and speak to accomplish daily events in the community, the family, and on the job. The Adult Performance Level program popularized the notion of “functional literacy,” which is defined as reading and writing at a minimal level in day-to-day living. These functional skills include everyday literacy skills, such as reading a bus schedule, writing a check, and completing a job application. This cognitive view of literacy thus includes economic competence.

A social view of adult literacy emphasizes the reading, writing, speaking, listening, and critical thinking skills needed for participation in a democratic society. This view emphasizes social power, action, and change. Researchers, educators, community activists, and adults with limited literacy ability argue for this definition of literacy. In this view, literacy is not simply an autonomous set of generalized skills and practices predetermined by others; rather, literacy is embedded in culture and is socially and politically constructed.

The most prevalent and broadest view of literacy in adult literacy programs is “true literacy,” covering individuals who can read and write beyond survival levels, take pleasure from a wide range of reading materials (including the canon or classic literature), and engage in writing for creative reasons. Expanding the notion of true literacy is the construct of “high literacy,” or the ability to think deeply, efficiently, and effectively with concepts and ideas necessary for the new millennium, particularly those abilities needed to keep up with the changing demands of new technologies. What is considered “high literacy” today, however, may become “basic literacy” tomorrow.

Assessments of Adult Literacy

The National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) is a nationally representative survey that measures English language literacy skills of U.S. adults age 16 years or older living in households or prisons. The NAAL defines literacy as both task based (everyday literacy tasks) and skills based (skills ranging from recognizing words to higher-level skills, such as making inferences from a text). Administered in 1992 and again in 2003, the NAAL examined adults’ reading ability in three areas—prose literacy (e.g., newspapers, poems, and fiction); document literacy (e.g., job applications, bus schedules, and maps); and quantitative literacy (e.g., balancing a checkbook). Resulting classifications in prose literacy were either below basic (can do no more than the most simple and concrete literacy activities), basic (can perform simple and everyday literacy activities), intermediate (can perform moderately challenging literacy activities), and proficient (can perform challenging literacy activities). Results from 2003 show that about 43 percent of adults scored below basic or basic, and 57 percent of adults scored at the intermediate or proficient levels. No significant change in prose and document literacy occurred between the two assessments, but quantitative literacy increased.

Adult Literacy Education

Adult Basic Education (ABE) is typically either formal literacy instruction programs, such as that offered at community colleges, or volunteer tutors providing individualized instruction. Literacy tutors receive training through federally funded programs, such as the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps, or from literacy advocacy groups such as ProLiteracy Worldwide, the oldest and largest nongovernmental literacy organization in the world. ABE programs focus on teaching adults to read and write, but they might also offer basic mathematics instruction. ABE programs attract a wide range of participants in terms of ages, grade-level reading abilities, skills, and life experiences. Contrary to popular belief, most ABE participants are not illiterate but rather individuals who have completed several years of schooling yet remain unsuccessful at learning to read. Enrollment in ABE is typically free and open-ended, enabling adults to drop in and out as circumstances allow.

Workplace literacy refers either to the literacy strategies, functions, tasks, and materials needed in workplace settings, or to literacy programs conducted within workplace settings. These programs may focus on specific literacy demands of the workplace or may be any literacy program conducted at the work site, such as preparing to pass the GED (General Educational Development test, the high school equivalency test). Workplace literacy often involves myriad literacy skills, including listening, speaking (including specialized vocabulary), writing notes, reading from a paper or computer screen, doing mathematical calculations, and responding to tasks both orally and in writing.

First identified in the 1800s, workplace literacy issues led to labor union literacy programs at that time. Later, in the early 20th century, Congress heard testimony about the literacy problems among miners. The U.S. military enacted special literacy programs for soldiers during World War I. During the 1980s and 1990s, researchers documented literacy demands in the civilian workplace, finding that workers in most occupations read and wrote more in the workplace than most students did in school settings.

Workplace literacy programs evolved to cope with the growing population of workers for whom English is a second language and to provide training for workers with low literacy skills. The federal government funds workplace literacy programs that address basic language and literacy needs, as well as the more complex literacy demands of the workplace, by providing opportunities for learners to practice reading and writing using workplace examples. These activities usually also include discussion of the participants’ beliefs about and plans for literacy and informational talks about their reading and writing processes.

Resources in Adult Literacy

Several agencies and organizations support adult literacy programs and contribute to a continuing reform agenda. For example, the U.S. Department of Education, Division of Adult Education and Literacy, administers grants and supports research and development efforts, such as funding the National Institute for Literacy, to promote improvement of adult literacy services. The National Center for Adult Learning and Literacy conducts and disseminates research on adult literacy. Laubach Literacy and Literacy Volunteers of America support volunteer and community-based literacy programs. The National Center for Family Literacy provides funding, training, and technical assistance to family literacy programs.

Adult Literacy and Social Justice

The issue of adult literacy is ultimately an issue of access. The culturally diverse and socioeconomically disadvantaged have the fewest opportunities for literacy development and practice both in and out of school. Those with the most resources (e.g., education, books, new technology, language-rich environments, psychological and emotional support) have the greatest access to literacy. Further, the rapid development of information technology not only broadens current definitions of literacy but also widens the gap between those who have access to the widest range of literacy practices and those who have little or no access. This gap is often referred to as “the digital divide,” a social problem that is considered a new civil rights issue of the 21st century. Hence, the digital age brings new challenges to the promotion of adult literacy development and practice in today’s society.

Bibliography:

Comings, John. 2002. “Adult Literacy Programs.” Pp. 22-25 in Literacy in America: An Encyclopedia of History, Theory and Practice, edited by B. J. Guzzetti. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Dole, Janice A. 2000. “What Will Be the Demands of Literacy in the Workplace in the Next Millennium?” Reading Research Quarterly 35(3):382-83.
Kazemek, Francis E. and Patricia Rigg. 2002. “Literacy Definitions.” Pp. 310-13 in Literacy in America: An Encyclopedia of History, Theory and Practice, edited by B. J. Guzzetti. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Mikulecky, Larry and Paul Lloyd. 1997. “Evaluation of Workplace Literacy Programs: A Profile of Effective Instructional Practices.” Journal of Literacy Research 29(4):555-86.
National Assessment of Adult Literacy. (https://nces.ed.gov/naal/).
Smith, M. Cecil. 2007. “Teaching and Learning in Adult Basic Education.” In Literacy for the New Millennium: Adult Literacy, vol. 4, edited by B. J. Guzzetti. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Street, Brian. 1984. Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

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