Abstract
This study used the PIAAC dataset to compare the effects of informal literacy learning on adults’ literacy proficiency to those of formal and non-formal learning. The study participants were Nordic adults aged 35–65 years. The statistical method was regression analysis. The results indicate that informal literacy learning had the most significant effect on Nordic adults’ literacy proficiency. Non-formal adult education had a clearly smaller effect, and formal adult education seemed to have a negative effect when background factors were controlled for. Informal learning, particularly reading outside work, had a significant effect independent of adults’ backgrounds, indicating that it offers also less-educated and unemployed adults the opportunity to develop literacy proficiency.
Highlights
Literacy is one of the key competencies needed for lifelong learning; it is a significant component of personal development, employability, social inclusion and active citizenship throughout an individual’s life
This study examines informal literacy learning’s effect at and outside of work on adults’ literacy proficiency using a dataset collected by the OECD’s Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), in which literacy assessment was limited to reading literacy and was defined as ‘understanding, evaluating, using and engaging with written texts to participate in society, to achieve one’s goals and to develop one’s knowledge and potential’ (OECD, 2012, p. 20)
We focus on adults in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, which have high average literacy proficiency levels (OECD, 2013a, 2015)
Summary
Literacy is one of the key competencies needed for lifelong learning; it is a significant component of personal development, employability, social inclusion and active citizenship throughout an individual’s life. In modern knowledge societies, solid literacy skills are necessary in many situations related to education, work and citizenship. From a lifelong learning perspective, literacy can be viewed as an essential competency in such situations. Literacy needs to be conceptualised as a lifelong learning goal (e.g., Binkley, Erstad, Herman, Raizen, Ripley, Miller-Ricci & Rumble, 2012). Considering that the technologies related to literacy, as well as literacy requirements, constantly are changing, and given such technologies’ rapid growth over the past two decades, lifelong literacy learning (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, Castek & Henry, 2013) is a challenge that many adults and younger people face today. Digital literacy is different from traditional literacy and may challenge, and even reform, practices in many areas of life, including adult education (Wildemeersch & Jütte, 2017)
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