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Literacy as specified in the recent PIAAC survey (OECD 2013) is separated into competence levels. This allows a comparison of adults performing on literacy Level I and below versus those performing on Level IV and above. The PIAAC survey also contains variables on participation in adult education. Core findings confirm the Matthew effect for participation rates, but not for training hours.
Based on several contemporary international impulses on national educational policy, the article discusses the interaction of management and educational research, particularly indicator-aided educational reporting. First, the author scans the relevance and weaknesses of international interventions. In the light of national self-determination of educational issues, he stresses the significance of national educational reporting as well as the consideration of federal structure and regional levels…
The article focuses the question whether workforce literacy strategies in research and policies may tend to exclude relevant fields of literacy, which have emancipatory chances for participants, but which regularly fail in including low qualified or literate adults, namely the area of basic civic education. The relevance of basic civic education will be discussed using contemporary theories, which point at a crisis of democracy and explain this by the spread of income and capital and its legiti…
This paper draws on three data sources – a national survey from Germany of adult literacy and numeracy skills (leo. – Level-One Study), the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC), and case studies of workplaces in England – to argue for a greater focus by policymakers and researchers on the literacy demand experienced by adults. We consider the heterogeneity of the population of adults deemed functionally illiterate by large-scale national and internatio…
This contribution deals with the definition of adult basic education and its entanglement with interests and power relations in the field of public education administration of the German Laender. As the New Literacy Studies view literacy as a social practice that is related to interests and power relations, guided interviews concerning the definition of adult basic education as well as legitimising rationales from the perspective of education administration were illustrated. The interviews are …
The JDC (Defence and Citizenship Day) has become an essential element in the fight against illiteracy in France. It not only furnishes annual statistics for national, regional and local policy evaluation, but also identifies those young adults within a entire cohort (mostly 17–19) who need help with their literacy skills, so that they can be referred to by support organisations. It is difficult to assess very precisely the impact of post-JDC actions carried out by JDC partners. Neither the JDC…
The author discusses the influence of the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) on the literacy education field in Canada. Methodology is holistic and centred around critical policy analysis. Finds Canada invested heavily in the surveys and has not yet changed policy or practice in response to the findings. Two reasons for lack of influence are suggested: the difficulty of comparing literacy survey results over time, and the lack of federal investment in the org…
Wir haben festgestellt ..., daß es ein schwieriges Unterfangen ist, sich Europa zu nähern. Schon das, was mit Europa gemeint ist, zerfasert bei genauerem Blick: Weder geographisch noch politisch noch kulturell hat Europa klare Grenzen. So stand es im Editorial des Themenheftes Europa und Bildung, das wir vor drei Jahren als Nr. IV/1995 dieser Zeitschrift veröffentlichten. Erst drei Jahre, und nun wieder das gleiche Thema? Welch einfallslose Redaktion! Sogar so einfallslos, diesen beiden Europa-…
