Re-defining Post-Literacy in a Changing World - Education Research Paper No. 29, 1999, 148 p.

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Executive Summary

RE-DEFINING POST-LITERACY IN A CHANGING WORLD

1. This report is a follow-up to the report on post-literacy materials which Education for Development presented to ODA in 1993, a shortened version of which was published by ODA as Research Report 10 Using Literacy: a new approach to post-literacy materials 1994. This report has been prepared by a team constituted from members of Education for Development.

2. The report concentrates on the specific stage in adult literacy programmes (usually a short-term stage) which immediately succeeds the initial literacy teaching (here called ILT) and which leads on to some other activity such as income-generation, group development programme, employment, or continuing basic education for adults. It does not consider continuing education or other post-basic education adult development activities.

3. The report reviews current practice in post-literacy (PL) as a bridge stage.

3.1 All PL programmes are agreed that the starting point of PL is the end of initial literacy teaching (ILT). But there is both uncertainty and conflict over the end stage of the process. The goal to which PL aims can be independent reading, continuing education (formal or non-formal), income-generation activities, development group activities etc.

3.2 Because of this lack of agreement over the end goal of the stage, the activities inside PL are very diverse and often contested. All PL programmes are seen as programmes of further learning. Some PL programmes concentrate on developing literacy skills further; others concentrate on skill training, group formation, or further education using a non-formal curriculum.

3.2 The target group of current PL programmes is usually the graduates from adult literacy classes, but some others (especially younger persons) are often admitted.

3.3 The main provision for PL is in the form of the development of PL materials - reading materials of an improving nature intended to promote central visions of development. These are developed mainly from the top-down, especially in writing workshops, and they are made available through local PL centres or libraries.

3.4 The staffing of PL is usually the same as for ILT; and there is virtually no specific training for PL.

4. The report examines some of the pressures for change with this model.

4.1 It points out that there are many expressions of concern about PL from practitioners and planners - about its separation in some countries from a planned basic education programme; about the lack of commitment to PL on the part of policy-makers and donors, and its lack of institutional capacity; about the gap between ILT and PL, and between PL and Continuing Education (CE); about its failure to reach the right or enough participants (only about one in ten participants in ILT join in PL activities); about the inappropriateness of the PL materials, their inadequate distribution and utilisation; about the weaknesses of local library and PL centres; about its failure to achieve its own goals, and its failure to promote gender-sensitised literacies.

4.2 The report examines a number of innovatory approaches to adult literacy such as the social uses of literacy, work-based literacy, the 'literacy comes second' model, community literacy approaches, 'real literacies' approaches, bi-lingual literacies, non-structural literacy, REFLECT, literacy drop-in centres, local libraries, visual literacies etc, all of which challenge many of the traditional concepts about literacy and especially call into question the issue of adults learning literacy in stages, including a post-literacy stage. The report notes in particular 'learner-generated material' development (LGM), which it sees as valuable, in part for the impact it has on the participants' confidence and skill development, and in part for its ability to create texts which are culturally relevant to the participant group - although it notes that LGM is not often sustainable for long.

4.3 The report next examines several key areas of changing understanding, including

· adult learning theory, which suggests that adults do not learn best in a classroom situation, even when the textbooks have been adapted to their interests, but that they learn best from experiential learning when engaged in the real tasks of everyday living

· the New Literacy Studies, which propose that literacy should be seen as a set of social practices which vary from context to context; recent research into local literacies in several countries has demonstrated very clearly how different these literacy practices are (for example, the literacy practices of a taxi driver are very different from those of a poultry farmer), so that no one literacy learning programme can encompass all the different literacy needs which exist in any society

· language and access - modern understandings of language see it in terms of power and inclusion/exclusion, and decisions on language issues need to be made by the participants, not by policy-makers

· development theory and practice, where the modern understandings have moved away from a deficit model and instead concentrate through participatory practices on assisting with the very different intentions of the participant groups

· educational changes, including the paradox of increased centralisation and decentralisation

· the new technologies which not only will affect the cost-effectiveness of printing materials for new readers but have also led and will continue to lead to increased demand for access to up-to-date information and a sharing of views across wide distances.

All of these suggest that a single ILT and a single PL programme can no longer be seen to be able to meet the many varied identified literacy needs.

5. The report examines why the traditional model of PL is so strong: and suggests this is partly because of the lack of clarity about new approaches to PL, the existing investment (including emotional investment) in the current model, the lack of funds for experiments, the strength of the existing discourse on literacy as schooling, the lack of real evidence that the new approaches can bring about literacy development in terms of statistical data relating to the reduction of percentages of illiterates which governments and donors look for, the localised nature of the new literacies which make it appear to be unable to deal with a large-scale national problem, and the fact that such a change would need a public admission that existing programmes are failing.

6. But the report concludes that the traditional model of PL is failing, not only in the light of the concerns expressed by PL practitioners and policy-makers but also in the light of the changes in modern understandings. It fails to determine exactly what it is for, and has become an arena for contests over whether PL is for literacy learning or developmental tasks; whether it is for the promotion of group or individual competencies; whether it is to help adults to conform to prescribed notions of development or to encourage the participants to determine their own goals. Many PL programmes adopt a universal approach to their activities (all PL groups doing much the same kind of activity) rather than encouraging participant control. Traditional PL programmes reach very few persons, certainly not all who need help with literacy practices. They ignore the real literacy tasks and the real literacy materials which go with those tasks, preferring instead to develop improving reading materials to be sent out to local groups. They see the role of literacy skills as enabling central messages to reach the people. The staff engaged in PL are almost without exception not trained effectively for their roles. There are very few evaluations of PL, and those which exist universally judge it to be one of the weakest areas of adult literacy learning. The greatest cause of failure is that so few participants are able to transfer their literacy skills from the classroom or PL centre into daily use in their lives for their own purposes.

7. The report does not set out to promote a new programme for PL, but in order to encourage on-going debate, it builds its new approach to PL on a number of principles:

· that economic and social development will come about, not through the people learning literacy skills but through them using literacy skills

· that adult learning theory suggests that adults do not learn literacy skills first and then practise using them afterwards but that they learn through that process of using literacy in their own lives

· that there are in every community a series of real literacy practices and tasks which the people wish to engage in, and these are supported by real literacy materials (i.e. texts which have been produced for use, not for learning literacy, such as government forms, magazines, information leaflets and election posters, etc, all of which are best described as 'found texts') which exist in the social environment (some real literacy materials will need to fetched into the community and some will be created by the tasks which the people engage in)

· that non-literate adults are able to engage in development projects of their own choosing, that they do not need to learn literacy skills first

· that non-literate adults do engage in literacy practices in various ways, and that they will learn literacy skills best through these practices, not through a classroom textbook

· that most adults learn not in sequential and linear terms like school children but through undertaking their own often complicated tasks

8. In the light of these understandings, the report re-iterates the new definition of post-literacy which the earlier team proposed in the earlier report: instead of PL being the provision of further specially prepared learning programmes and learning materials for that small group who have completed an ILT programme, PL should be seen as the provision of assistance to all those who feel that they are having difficulties with the practice of literacy in real situations. This assistance should be outside the classroom (at the time and point of need) as well as inside it. PL then would

a) reach out to all those who will never go to classes to help them with their literacy practices in their daily lives

b) help those who do come to classes to transfer their newly learned literacy skills into use in their daily lives

c) help those who produce real literacy materials to ensure that these are accessible to those with limited literacy skills and confidence. Such texts can be adapted, distributed and mediated to those who feel inadequate in terms of their ability to cope with them.

9. The primary element in any PL programme then is helping adults of all kinds to practise literacy in real situations using found texts, rather than helping a small group to learn further literacy skills using specially prepared texts for that learning. The report does not set out in any detail ways in which this goal can be achieved, for it believes that these ways must be locally determined in order to be culturally appropriate.

10. Such an approach will also affect ILT; for the report argues that, if adult literacy is to adopt adult learning theory and practices, participant engagement in the practice of real literacy tasks should be made part of every literacy learning programme for adults. It therefore proposes two things:

· that every literacy learning programme (especially PL) needs to be based on surveys of the existing local literacy practices of the participants, not on generalised needs assessments;

· and secondly, that these real literacy tasks of the literacy learners should be brought into the literacy centres and form part of the work of every ILT class. An overlapping process should be developed, by which the number of real literacy tasks inside the class will gradually increase as textbook learning decreases, thus helping the transfer of literacy activities from the classroom into daily life.

11. The best way to achieve this kind of PL programme is for a 'PL service' (similar to an agricultural and health extension service) to be developed. Rather than one-off literacy campaigns and courses, adults need on-going help with their real literacy practices.

12. The report looks at and tries to answer a number of problems identified in relation to this new model of PL

· that there are few real literacy materials in some communities (especially those where the language of power is different from the local language) - to which the answer is that real literacy tasks certainly exist; if they do not exist, then there is no point in helping people to develop literacy skills

· that the use of existing literacy practices will not bring about socio-economic change. But socio-economic change needs to be brought about by the participants, not by the providers of literacy learning programmes; and secondly, the development of critical approaches to real literacy tasks and materials will encourage the participants to challenge the existing power structures which underlie all literacy practices

· that this process will be too difficult for the facilitators and participants, or that the real literacy materials (like the literacy primer) may become boring to the participants - but dealing with real literacy tasks chosen by the participants can hardly be too difficult or become boring

· that this approach cannot provide the government or donor with statistics relating to the literacy levels of the learners - but new ways of developing measures by which the contribution of local developmental activities to the achievement of formalised goals are already being developed in areas such as poverty and these can be adapted to adult literacy practices as well

· that it is not easy to build a national programme on many different local literacies - but the creation of a bottom-up diversified development programme meeting agreed criteria and directed towards achieving agreed goals in different ways in the light of different local circumstances are being developed in other developmental areas such as poverty, and these can be adapted to adult literacy.

13. The report concludes by examining the implications of this approach for policy-makers and donors, especially indicating certain areas which might attract favourable attention from funders. These include support for LGM, for localised surveys of literacy practices in order to develop appropriate learning programmes, for the creation of new measurable indicators of the use of literacy skills in everyday life, for a literacy support service, and for training for post-literacy.

14. Further research is needed - into local literacies, participant motivations, how to adapt real literacy materials for new reader groups, literacy-based income-generation, new ways of assessing literacy usage in statistical format, the new technologies in relation to literacy skill development, and into language and numeracy, accreditation and the training of facilitators.

15. The report sets out an action plan

· an international debate on the issues which it raises,
· a workshop on relevant donor funding,
· and a number of pilot projects in PL based on this new approach.

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