Governments and other stakeholders are increasingly interested in assessing the skills of their adult populations in order to monitor how well prepared they are for the challenges of the modern knowledge-based society. The current paper provides an overview of the conceptual framework guiding the development of the assessment of literacy in the…

The term "illiterate" that is commonly used to describe someone who cannot read or write is an absolute term, which fails to recognize that those who are deemed "illiterate" are probably in fact "literate" to some degree. The approach taken to define and measure literacy in the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) acknowledges the limitation…

This document contains two extended papers and one shorter commentary that reflect a continuing debate between two schools of thought on literacy that have been called the "autonomous" and the "sociocultural.""The Persisting Power and Costs of the Literacy Myth" (Harvey J. Graff) argues that current discourse on…

Research on adult literacy in Canada showed the need for another category of adult reader--Level 3. Canadians at Level 3 can use reading materials in a variety of situations, provided the material is simple and clearly laid out, and the tasks involved are not too complicated. Although these people generally do not see themselves as having…

This document is a collection of three parts: two extended papers and one shorter commentary on the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS). These originally appeared in "Literacy Across the Curriculum" in response to an invitation for comment to several prominent international researchers. The first of these entitled "The…

This report is designed to present data pertaining to Ontario from the Statistics Canada "Survey of Literacy Skills Used in Daily Activities" in which 9,500 adult Canadians were interviewed and tested. (In Ontario, 2,201 adults were interviewed and tested.) It is the first comprehensive report on the state of everyday reading skills of…