This article uses data from longitudinal, ethnographic research to examine how, six years after attending literacy classes, 12 adults in rural El Salvador used literacy, their perceptions of the temporary and longer-term psychosocial and economic benefits of literacy education, and their memories of literacy classes. The findings support prior…

Background/Context: In contrast to cultural constructs that equate education with cognitive development and formal schooling, the Latin American cultural model of educacion encompasses academic knowledge and social competence. Prior scholarship has mainly investigated parental notions of educacion vis-a-vis childrearing and schooling, primarily…

Based on ethnographic, participatory research in two Salvadoran villages, this article analyzes how features of the sociocultural setting bred discord and mistrust among the participants in an adult literacy program and other community residents, thereby undermining the program's goal of equipping "campesinos" to work together to improve…

The experiences of men and women who participated in a Salvadoran adult literacy program belie the instrumentalist discourse of adult education, for they identified psychosocial benefits as the most meaningful aspects of the program. Attending literacy classes did not change their material situation as underemployed "campesinos/as," but…

This paper discusses some of the ways in which "low participation" in a Central American adult literacy project, often attributed by planners to "barriers" to or "lack of motivation" for literacy, revealed through ethnographic fieldwork a complex story of resistance and co-option. People engaged with literacy and the…

The participatory rural appraisal (PRA) technique was used with 1,550 women and 420 men in more than 100 villages in Uganda, El Salvador, and Bangladesh over a 2-year period to develop and pilot test an approach to literacy education called REFLECT (Regenerated Freirean Literacy through Empowering Community Techniques). The REFLECT approach, which…

This book, based on the work of a teacher and community development expert with many years of teaching adult education in numerous developing countries all over the world, provides a process for teaching and learning with adults. The book is illustrated with stories from the author's experience and examples that show how to begin, set up, carry…