This ethnographically informed study explored how 32 former participants in the Functional Adult Literacy (FAL) Program in rural Uganda used learning from the program in their daily lives, the perceived outcomes of applying the practices learned in the program, and the meanings that literacy held for participants. Learning domains included…

The role of functional literacy, linked to employment, leads to a narrow view of rural learners' need both economically and socially. The drive for individuals to take responsibility for their own learning and development is, indeed, a good thing. However, the burden of guilt felt by those who are unable, or unwilling, to achieve the standards set…

Describes an experimental system which uses pictorial representation for labeling prescribed medicines in the United Kingdom. Since the pictorial approach breaks the language barrier, the labels should present no problems either to illiterates or minority groups who have difficulty in understanding English. (JEG)

One hundred sixty adult basic education students functioning at or below the sixth-grade level rated the extent to which they needed to learn 20 functional tasks. Factor analysis suggested three broad categories: everyday reading and writing, math and measurement, and special literacy tasks. Cluster analysis identified distinct subgroups based on…

Reports on the extent of illiteracy in the United States and explores various definitions of literacy. (GT)

Although the majority of today's young adults meet or surpass the "literacy" standards of 25 years ago, they often lack the level of literacy needed to meet current demands. The National Assessment of Educational Progress studied a nationally representative sample of 3,600 young American adults, aged 21 to 25, to determine how well they could…

By the early nineteenth century, religion and social necessity had driven literacy in western Europe and in the United States from an overall level below 20% to about 50% of all men in a little more than two centuries; women had benefited as well. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the state entered the business of education on a large…

Recently, the definition of functional literacy has been broadened to include the completion of a secondary education or its equivalent. This definition focuses on obtaining the functional competencies required to perform adequately in adult life. Three major sets of functional competencies are represented in models developed by the Adult…

Government survey results reveal that large numbers of adults in the United States do not possess the minimal survival and life-coping skills necessary to function successfully in daily living. Since reading is the most basic of all life survival skills, a thematic reading that emphasized consumer survival was developed in the fall of 1977 at…

This document contains the final report, trainer handbook for volunteer tutor trainers, and idea book for volunteer tutors from a project conducted to develop a supplemental tutor training program and life skills curriculum specifically for developmentally disabled (DD) adult learners. The final report describes how a group of DD adult learners…

In accordance with the national aims for adult literacy programs, an Adult Performance Level (APL) project was devised whose primary goal was to produce sequential tests of APL objectives derived from the requirements of adult living in four major areas: reading, writing, computation, and general knowledge. To document these abilities and skills…

CHOICES, a literacy program for homeless families, piloted a program at the Women's Emergency Shelter in Champaign, Illinois and later expanded its services to A Woman's Place, a domestic violence shelter, in Urbana, Illinois. The CHOICES program offered weekly language activities for the children and gave mothers information about developing…

This guide contains reviews of 49 selected books and pamphlets of special interest to women that were identified as good Canadian materials for women learning to read by a working group of the Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women. Among the types of materials reviewed are the following: books about contraception and reproductive…

This annotated bibliography lists 183 books dealing with adult literacy under 10 main categories: life skills; biographies; nonfiction; fiction; work identification workbooks; comprehension workbooks; skill development series; spelling workbooks; vocabulary workbooks; writing workbooks; and video programs. The categories are further subdivided…

This booklet provides descriptions of 16 adult education programs that have been validated as successful by the Joint Dissemination Review Panel (JDRP), U.S. Department of Education and that are being promoted by the National Diffusion Network (NDN). Although the programs were developed by individual school districts in response to local needs,…