Through this international cross-case analysis of ethnographic literacy practices data, we investigated two questions: (1) In what literacy practices do adults with limited or no schooling engage for personal fulfillment? and (2) What do these practices reveal about the nature of literacy for individuals who are often characterized as illiterate?…

The paper presents the results of a qualitative study into the lives of people with inadequate functional literacy skills. The data were collected through a biographical interview with a respondent whose characteristics correspond to those of a hypothetical person likely to exhibit signs of low functional literacy. The characteristics, such as…

This case study of an adult with developmental disabilities and no educational history reports on the successful literacy tutoring method used, which entails echo reading of brief passages and moving from holistic recognition of print to analysis of decoding and spelling. This approach contrasts with methods that first use small units of…