During the early Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union used adult literacy education to wield influence in "Third World" countries. Frank C. Laubach, the "Apostle of Literacy," wrote prolifically about adult literacy and conducted and advised literacy campaigns in more than 100 countries, yet his work is understudied…

This quantitative study examined the current level of literacy skills of three cohorts of learners after they completed a non-formal basic literacy programme in 2017, 2018 and 2019. The purpose of the study, conducted in late 2019, was to identify major factors that influenced the maintenance of their levels of reading and calculating skills. The…

Adopting the methods of multimodal conversation analysis, this study demonstrates that adult second language (L2) users with emergent literacy formulate requests as 'complex multimodal Gestalts' consisting prototypically of deictic or depictive gestures combined with gaze, situationally relevant material, and vocal or linguistic resources. The…

The framework for this paper takes its central orientation from the New Literacy Studies (NLS) body of research which focuses on the analysis of texts and practices rather than the skills-oriented perspective of large-scale quantitative studies. In this paper, these are the texts of everyday life and the literacy practices of adult migrants before…

This policy brief is produced by UEA UNESCO Chair in Adult Literacy and Learning for Social Transformation at Bahir Dar University, as part of impact activities for "Family Literacy, Indigenous Learning and Sustainable Development: Proof of Concept Pilot" Project. This work was supported by University of East Anglia's Global Research…

This research sought to investigate the effects of instructional materials used at community resource centers on adult literacy learners in community development activities with a specific focus on Nyamira North Sub-County, Kenya. The study was guided by the constructivism theory of learning. It employed the descriptive survey design where a…

During the past two decades, an increasing number of European countries have introduced language requirements for residency, citizenship, and sometimes even for entry to the country and family reunification. As a result, democratic rights as well as basic human rights have come to depend upon an individual's ability to obtain a certain score on a…

Access to lifelong learning opportunities has long been discussed in terms of the economic benefits conferred by access to and engagement in further education by members of the labor force, particularly within the global knowledge economy. However, equitable access to lifelong education opportunities, particularly for low-skilled adults in the…

This research was motivated by some multicultural classroom students' reactions to practicing writing argumentative text including the fact that Indonesia's adult literacy rate of 95% is not accompanied by the ability to recognize and adopt composed facts, which on average is very little. This research was formerly aimed to depict how…

Background: A significant portion of adults struggle to read at a basic level. Word reading (defined here as decoding and word recognition) appears to play a pivotal role for this population of readers; however, less is known about how word reading relates to other important semantic processes (e.g., vocabulary, sentence processing) known to…

The concepts of adult literacy and adult education have been predominantly framed by the discourse of development in Nepal whereby literacy programmes are designed to combat illiteracy with the purpose of promoting the socio-economic and human development in the country. In this effort, certain groups of women and ethnic minorities have been…

In this chapter, we focus on the German integration course for migrants, the number of which increased rapidly beginning in 2015. The courses are mandated by the German Immigration Act and represent a relatively well-financed and professional course programme within the national adult education system. The main challenges between 2015 and 2018…

Notwithstanding their contribution to the development of any society, women are the underclass. Their participation in social, economic, and political spheres could be limited because of illiteracy. To improve their involvement, providing adult education is incontestable. This article examines Ethiopian women's empowerment through Integrated…

This paper recounts the authors' journey of changing practice from teaching adult literacy to helping other teachers by creating digital and printed learning resources and tutor training materials to support a foundational literacy program designed to help those who teach English speaking adults to read and write.

Since independence, Timor-Leste has taken initiatives to improve adult literacy and successive governments, international NGOs and donor agencies have been involved in literacy programmes. This paper explores the non-formal literacy programmes with a particular focus on the Second Chance Education Project (SCEP), an accelerated learning model that…