The purposes of this study are to assess Swedish adults' reading and writing skills so that they can be compared with the corresponding skills of students in the comprehensive and upper secondary schools, and to investigate the extent to which adults' reading and writing activities can be described as satisfactory to their needs. The subjects of…

The Swedish Basic Skills in a Long Term Perspective research project, which is described in this paper, was prompted by the belief that only a long-term perspective could reveal significant changes in schools and society at large. The general purpose of the described project is to endeavor, in historical and societal terms, to elucidate and…

Four cities in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have been engaged since 1977 in a joint study of the junior level of elementary school. (More than 5,000 pupils are involved in the study.) The Department of Education at the University of Turku joined the project in the autumn term of 1979. The purpose of the Swedish project, reported here, was to…