[AAACE-NLA] Literacy Today article

Thu Dec 9 22:07:13 EST 2004

I'm fascinated by your reply, Andres, and am in absolute agreement. I
remember training literacy tutors who were absolutely overwhelmed by the
many skills sets involved in such simple transactions as writing a check at
a bank, let alone navigating these automated devices. I remember a study
some time back that talked about functional literacy being higher in
workplace or lifeskills settings where the survival factor was key than a
person's "literacy level." But I've also found that low-level literacy
students are often surrounded by those functioning similarly, and seeing
that level as "normal." It's when the person gets some sense of the gap
between the level where they are and what's possible, even at more
"advanced" employment or daily life tasks," that they begin to perceive,
often with great dismay, how great the gap is between what they can do and
what they thought they could do. This is the time when students are most
often "lost," when they seem to plateau at what they now perceive to be an
insufficient level.
Best,
Bonnie Odiorne, Ph.D.
English Language Institute, Writing Center
Post University, Waterbury, CT

-----Original Message-----
From: aaace-nla-bounces at lists.literacytent.org
[mailto:aaace-nla-bounces at lists.literacytent.org]On Behalf Of
AndresMuro at aol.com
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 2:37 PM
To: National Literacy Advocacy List sponsored by AAACE
Subject: Re: [AAACE-NLA] Literacy Today article

Tom: There are two possibilities. 1. The tests are inaccurate, or, 2. Adults
are poor judges of their own skills.

I would tend think that the former is the case. Let me try illustrate this
point with real life examples. When I travel to Washington DC regularly with
other highly educated professional, many cannot navigate a subway fare card
machine. Many go into a panic and are only able to get a fare card with
assistance from someone else.  Many grocery stores are eliminating cashiers
for automatic cash registers. Many very educated people cannot negotiate
these machines for the first time w/o help. I see educated people in
airports not being able to get an airplane ticket from an automated ticket
dispenser without verbal help. My usual example of the highly educated
husband who cannot shop for groceries and cook a meal when the wife is gone
also applies.

If all of the above were questions in some test to measure literacy skills,
many of us would probably score low. However, do any of us feel that we have
limited literacy skills. Probably not?

If we define literacy as the ability to participate in various contexts,
then, our inability to negotiate some of them alone does not make us less
literate if we are able to seek help from others in order to negotiate these
contexts.

So if we will not define ourselves as low literate because we cannot buy a
subway card, get an airplane ticket from a machine, use an automated cash
register to pay for groceries, or buy groceries and cook dinner, then I
would presume that other people may not feel that they have limited literacy
skills if the do not perform well in a standardized test in an artificial
environment.

The question about literacy emerges when our limitations begin to interfere
with our ability to accomplish something. So, if we cannot get a subway
card, there is nobody around, and we somehow end up short $20.00 in an
attempt to buy a single ride, then, we may have a problem. Or, if we are too
shy to ask for help.

Andres

In a message dated 12/8/2004 7:48:30 PM Eastern Standard Time, Thomas Sticht
<tsticht at znet.com> writes:

>Reprinted From Literacy Today for December 2004
>Published in the United Kingdom by the National Literacy Trust
>http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/
>
>Both the US and UK governments have declared that millions of their adults
>have problems with basic literacy skills. Tom Sticht, an international
>consultant in adult education, examines the statistics, policies and
>learners’ attitudes from both sides of the Atlantic.
>
>Adult Literacy is Testing My Wits
>
>Strange things go on in adult literacy education. For instance, in 1993,
>the US federal government declared 47 per cent (90 million) of adults
>deficient in literacy skills, then lowered funding for literacy education
>for each of the next three years. Now, in 2004,  federal funds are less
>than US$220 per enroller; fewer than four per cent of literacy deficient
>adults enrol in programmes in a given year and most do not stay for more
>than 50 to 100 hours of instruction (U. S. Department of Education, 2003).
>
>Similarly, in the UK, the 1999 Moser study reported that some seven
>million adults assessed by the International Adult Literacy Survey were
>seriously deficient in literacy. Unlike the US, the UK reacted to the
>Moser report by instituting a new government office with a mandate to
>deliver a new Skills for Life strategy and invested billions of pounds
>into adult basic skills programmes. But a Guardian newspaper article
>earlier this year indicated that only about 18 per cent (135,000) of the
>750,000 adults taking courses under the Government’s Skills for Life
>strategy were from the lowest level of literacy identified as "at risk" by
>the Moser report (Kingston, 2004).
>
>So, what’s going on here? How come millions of adults are being declared
>"at risk" of deficient basic skills in the US and UK, yet programmes are
>not being overrun with adults trying to get into them. While I know of no
>certain answer, one thing is common in both countries: most of the adults
>declared functionally incompetent in literacy, based on their test scores,
>do not think they have a literacy problem. In the US, two-thirds to
>three-quarters of the adults in the lowest level of literacy on the 1992
>National Adult Literacy Survey thought they read well or very well.
>Overall, more than 93 per cent of adults thought their literacy skills
>were just fine and met their everyday needs at work and daily life.
>
>In the UK, the 2003 Skills for Life Survey reported that some 96 per cent
>of adults estimated that they were fairly good or very good at reading for
>everyday life; only around five per cent estimated their reading skills to
>be below average. Adults were somewhat less optimistic about their writing
>skills, but were still overwhelmingly (93 per cent) apt to rate themselves
>as fairly or very good at writing to meet everyday needs. Surprisingly,
>4.3 million (83 per cent) of the 5.2 million adults classified in the
>three Entry levels of the Skills for Life standardised test, and hence
>considered to be the most poorly literate, estimated their skills to be
>fairly or very good.
>
>So, in both the US and the UK, the great majority of adults that the
>governments say are deficient in literacy, based on government tests, do
>not think they have a basic skills problem. Maybe this is one reason that
>millions more adults in these nations do not enrol in provision.
>
>This raises questions about how well the government tests reflect adults’
>use of their literacy skills in their everyday lives. Are these tests
>ecologically valid? For instance, should the same tests be used for 16 to
>24-year-olds as for 50 to 60-year-olds? It is well established that adult
>cognitive abilities such as short term memory and information processing
>efficiency change with age. Should the same tests be used with young
>adults as with older adults?
>
>Another problem with these tests comes when they are used to measure
>progress in learning basic skills. In the UK, a government-sponsored study
>of learning in adult basic skills programmes found that while most adults
>made improvements in their skills from the beginning to the final testing,
>30 per cent lost over 12.5 points from what they scored at the beginning
>of the course (Brooks et al, 2001). This is like unlearning literacy for
>almost a third of the adult students. Can this be true? If not, then why
>are tests being used that permit this sort of negative-gain score change?
>
>Surprisingly, in both the US and the UK, literacy programmes aren’t
>allowed to teach what is on the tests used to evaluate learning. Teaching
>to the test is considered cheating. But no rationale is given for why
>tests that measure something that isn’t being taught should be used in
>preference to tests that measure what is being taught.
>
>Is it appropriate to assess adult literacy skills in national surveys and
>evaluate learning in literacy programmes with these sorts of tests and
>procedures? It tests one’s wits to think so.
>
>References
>
>U. S. Department of Education. (2003). Adult Education and Family Literacy
>Program Year 2001-2002: Report to Congress on State Performance.
>Washington, DC: Office of Vocational and Adult Education.
>
>Brooks et al (2001) Progress in Adult Literacy: Do Learners Learn?,
>London: Basic Skills Agency
>
>Peter Kingston (2004) Question over Labour’s  skills target claim,
>Guardian Education, 29 June 2004, www.guardian.co.uk
>
>Department for Education and Skills (2003) Skills for Life Survey: A
>national needs and impact survey of literacy, numeracy and ICT skills,
>www.dfes.gov.uk/readwriteplus
>
>Contact Tom Sticht at tsticht at aznet.net
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>AAACE-NLA mailing list: AAACE-NLA at lists.literacytent.org
>http://lists.literacytent.org/mailman/listinfo/aaace-nla
>LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and goodies for literacy
>http://literacytent.org
>

--
Please take a look at my artwork: www.geocities.com/andresmuro/art.html

_______________________________________________
AAACE-NLA mailing list: AAACE-NLA at lists.literacytent.org
http://lists.literacytent.org/mailman/listinfo/aaace-nla
LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and goodies for literacy
http://literacytent.org