This paper gathers descriptions on the use of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) and essential skills cross Canada. IALS was developed as a population measure to lay out the distribution of skills and their relationship to other social and economic attributes. The information was taken from federal, provincial, and territorial…

Adult literacy is more than a condition of acquiring a set number of linguistic skills. Persons may know phonics and be able to decode simple readings perfectly; they may even know the meaning of many vocabulary words, but they still may be culturally illiterate. Cultural literacy demands more than mere linguistic skills; it demands participation…

Media statements and pronouncements by leaders in various sectors throughout the nation confirm that literacy still means the ability to work with the printed or written word. It is also evident that the term literacy includes more than reading. Literacy encompasses writing, speaking and listening, computing, and even problem-solving skills.…

The experiences of the 12-woman Boston Women's Health Book Collective was examined in a case study that focused on the collective's activities from its formation in 1969 through its publication of the book "Our Bodies, Ourselves" in 1973 and its opening of a women's clinic in downtown Boston that is still in operation today. The case…

Robert Kegan's constructive-development theory of adult growth postulates three different ways of knowing (instrumental, socializing, and self-authoring) and suggests that, although individuals develop differently, individual development can never be separated from culture. The potential of the constructive-development perspective on adult…