Background: In its communications, the European Commission stresses the importance of vocational education and endorses apprenticeship training. Educational systems that have dual tracks of academic alongside vocational learning routes have been shown to generate better labour market outcomes for school leavers and smooth the school-to-work…

As part of its mission, Educational Testing Service (ETS) has conducted education policy research focused on promoting equal opportunity for all individuals from early childhood through adulthood. This report provides a sampler of this extensive work in three areas chosen to represent major historical foci: (1) Analyzing, evaluating, and informing…

This paper considers the policy environment of adult literacy as a space within which sites of learning are shaped and given value. It explores the interplay between international, national and local visions of what literacy is, who literacy learners are and what counts as learning, thereby linking broader social formations with local practices of…

The concept of learning outcomes is at the heart of many research programmes and policy responses. International surveys (from the International Adult Literacy Survey, back in the mid-nineties, to the forthcoming Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes two OECD surveys), National Qualifications Frameworks or the European Qualifications…

This report is Iowa's response to the four questions that the United States Department of Education, Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE), requires of all states and territories receiving federal funding through the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), Title II, Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA). The overall goal of…

The Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) will establish technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the survey design and implementation processes of PIAAC yield high-quality and internationally comparable data. This document provides a revised version of the technical standards and guidelines originally…

When Ethiopia launched its National Literacy Campaign (NLC) in July 1979, it was announced that illiteracy would be removed from the urban areas of the country by 1982 and from rural Ethiopia by 1987. By the end of the 12th round of the NLC in February 1985, 16.9 million youths and adults had been covered by the campaign, and 12 million (almost…

Discourse analysis reveals how the meanings of literacy are both socially produced and variable between different discourses. A recent consultation with researchers is used to demonstrate how the outcomes were influenced by the discourses of participants and organizers. An argument is made to establish a literacy discourse analysis tradition to…

This book is a personal history of adult literacy as seen through the eyes of a student. The document assesses and evaluates styles of teaching and the student's role through the years 1969-1986 in England. The focus is on developing a new approach to literacy work, based on the principle of student-centered learning. In this method, the adult…

Systematic knowledge about the dimensions and levels of literacy and information about its distribution are prerequisites for forming good educational policy. This issue discusses the conduct and findings of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS). The IALS was not intended to rank literacy skills across countries, but was intended to make…

This booklet describes the adult education system in Indonesia. The first section provides background information, including the geographic and demographic characteristics and the socioeconomic setting of the country. The history of education in the country is also discussed. Government policy is the topic of the second section. Included are a…

To help states learn from each other's experiences, this report focuses on what three states--Arizona, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania--are doing to improve and expand family literacy services. It also includes background information on family literacy, resources, and names and addresses of state directors of family literacy. The case studies show…

Suggests that school books present a hidden curriculum that restricts the thinking and learning of students, that the high rate of U.S. illiteracy can be attributed to the method by which reading has been taught since World War II, and that encouraging students to read "real" books will ultimately improve the quality of education. (LP)

Three teams of teachers and administrators from three adult basic education programs in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia participated in a 2-year action research project that focused on developing approaches that local programs can use to document the outcomes of student participation in adult education programs. Facilitators helped the teams…

Many young people in member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development leave school unprepared for employment; this constitutes a failure of the school system. Identifies indicators of failure, policies for addressing failure, and three main policy challenges: development of a comparative knowledge base, removal of…