This report makes the case for a shift in emphasis in U.S. education and workforce development policy. Specifically, the report sets out a rationale for investing more in upgrading the foundational skill levels of the U.S. workforce. The report summarizes the results of studies that used data from the 1994 International Adult Literacy Survey…

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…

Federal accountability policies requiring rapid, measurable outcomes have increasingly shaped the nature and type of public literacy services available to adults. However, little empirical research has explored the impact of accountability policies on program practice in adult basic education, and almost no research has focused on the effect on…

In this article, we share the stories of three inspirational Black women who were pioneers in adult literacy: Harriet Jacobs, Susie King Taylor, and Septima Poinsette Clark. Their stories, connected to the struggle for Black literacy and the Civil Rights movement, remain relevant as we continue to strive for social justice and equity for all…

The purpose of this case series was to explore whether adults who did not have the opportunity to acquire reading skills during childhood are able to do so rapidly if trained with an adequate literacy program. After 14 weeks of training with a new, optimized, literacy course based on cognitive research, six out of eight participants became able to…

Most adult literacy studies tend to focus on learner outcomes, and the few that do include tutors usually focus on their compassion as volunteers and/or assess the effectiveness of tutor training. Since community adult literacy programs are largely dependent on volunteer tutors to provide instruction, tutors come from various backgrounds and are…

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…

Despite widescale literacy interventions, reading difficulties persist in the adult population. Results from international surveys report that millions of adults around the world remain unable to read the texts they require for daily life and work. Adult reading difficulties are diverse and under-researched, and adult-reading teachers are…

The focus of the Technology Solutions for Adult Basic Skills Challenges column begins with common challenges facing adult basic skills practitioners, expressed, for example, in the LINCS Integrating Technology group for which I am the moderator, in other LINCS groups, in my national and state conference or webinar presentations, or privately in…

Employment is foundational to young people's successful transition into adulthood, yet many youth with lived experience in the foster care system struggle to obtain employment that provides a living wage. Youth with foster care experience typically do not have the same contacts and connections to employment opportunities as youth who have not been…

Stuttering is a disorder that affects about 1% of the population and manifests as speech disfluencies. Reading difficulties and disabilities are commonly found in this population. Nonetheless, speech disfluencies have not been explored in adult struggling readers (ASRs). In the current study, we examined the rate of stuttering in ASRs as well as…

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…

In the most recent assessment by the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), approximately 19% of adults in the United States scored at or below Level 1 in literacy (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2019a). Adults who performed at Level 1 were only able to identify one key piece of information from…

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…