Some of the trends and issues in worldwide adult literacy include the existence of the following: (1) an increasing percentage of literate people, perhaps resulting from more children's education rather than literacy initiatives for adults; (2) fuzzy definitions of literacy and inaccurate self-reported data; (3) a change in ideology, moving from viewing adult literacy as charity, to radicalism, to pragmatism; (4) the need to ensure that literacy for liberation is pro-people but not necessarily antistate; (5) a move toward education for all, spurred by UNESCO; (6) the need to learn to nest adult literacy policies within educational policies and to nest educational policies within development policies; (7) the professionalization of the field of adult literacy; (8) a need to resolve the tension between theory and practice, between Northern and Southern hemispheres; (9) the need for social mobilization for adult literacy; (10) innovation in institution-building and organization of literacy work and borrowing and adapting across cultures; (11) the need to make adult literacy a part of the institutional mission of all extension agencies; (12) a tendency to focus more on the content of literacy materials; (13) the need to merge local and national concerns in the content of the literacy curriculum; (14) the reeducation of adult literacy professionals; and (15) the emergence of evaluation in the world of adult literacy. (18 references) (KC)