Adult Literacy Campaign Research Articles

South African Kha Ri Gude mass literacy campaign and Australian Aboriginal adult literacy campaign ‘Yes, I can!’: a comparative study

In 2008 the South African Government launched the Kha Ri Gude mass literacy campaign to address the country’s adult illiteracy problem. The Campaign drew upon the Cuban Yo, Si Puedo campaign model. In 2012, an Australian non-governmental organisation, Literacy for Life Foundation, likewise informed by the Cuban Yo, Si Puedo campaign model, launched its ‘Yes, I Can!’ adult literacy campaign aimed at addressing low English literacy among its Aboriginal population. In this paper, the authors from South Africa and Australia compare their campaign models; campaign partners; curricula; materials; targeted students; achievements; monitoring and evaluation processes, as well as the challenges experienced in executing the campaigns. The paper identifies various similarities which pertain to the strong influence of the Cuban model on the two campaigns and some variances which the authors attribute to the unique socio-political contexts of the two countries. What was common across both campaigns was the strong community involvement of local indigenous role players who participated in the implementation and monitoring of the movements and who motivated and supported learners to keep them involved in learning to the end of the programme. This feature strongly characterised the Cuban model.

Impact of a Community-Controlled Adult Literacy Campaign on Crime and Justice Outcomes in Remote Australian Aboriginal Communities

Impact of a Community-Controlled Adult Literacy Campaign on Crime and Justice Outcomes in Remote Australian Aboriginal Communities

Impact of a Community-Controlled Adult Literacy Campaign on Crime and Justice Outcomes in Remote Australian Aboriginal Communities

Using qualitative self-reported and observational evidence combined with a quantitative breakdown of linked administrative justice system data, this before-and-after study demonstrates the beneficial impacts of a First Nations community-controlled adult literacy campaign in six rural and remote communities in New South Wales, Australia. The most significant quantitative finding is a 50% reduction in reported serious offences in a sample of 162 campaign participants. Qualitative data from interviews found an increased use of legal assistance services following the campaign.. These findings are contextualised through the lived experiences and perceptions of First Nations campaign staff and participants, community leaders and government and non-government agency personnel.

“You Can’t Win a Cold War with Hot Weapons”: Frank C. Laubach’s Educational Project, Adult Literacy Campaigns, and US Foreign Policy (1945–1961)

“You Can’t Win a Cold War with Hot Weapons”: Frank C. Laubach’s Educational Project, Adult Literacy Campaigns, and US Foreign Policy (1945–1961)

Adult learning and education as a tool to contain pandemics: The COVID-19 experience.

In combating pandemics, more can be gained by changing citizens’ behaviours than by relying solely on the medical route. In the current COVID-19 pandemic, the struggle to contain the outbreak and push back new infection figures will ultimately be won by training citizens how to avoid creating secondary transmission chains. The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the relationship between individual behaviour and group risk. Mass training of all social strata of a country’s entire population is therefore critical in mitigating the pandemic. The authors of this article argue that adult learning and education (ALE) can play a pivotal role particularly in countries where average literacy levels are low, as these are usually the same countries in which healthcare systems are more fragile. This article explains why ALE, especially the promotion of health literacy as part of ALE (which is itself part of lifelong learning), is necessary to enable individuals to make informed health-related decisions. Research has shown that low- or non-literate individuals are less responsive to health education, less likely to use disease prevention services, and less likely to successfully manage chronic disease than literate citizens. The authors refer to the evaluation of the health literacy aspect of a large-scale adult literacy campaign launched in South Africa in 2008 which has yielded measurable outcomes and proved that the intervention had enabled adults to better understand health messages. They stress the importance of populations having at least a basic level of literacy and numeracy skills to enable them to receive and act on vital information during a pandemic or disaster. They argue that ALE should in fact be understood as an inherent element of every national emergency strategy, both in terms of prior preparation for possible future emergencies (such as pandemics, earthquakes, tornados, flooding, bushfires etc.), and in terms of reaction to a given emergency such as the current COVID-19 pandemic.

‘I can speak on this here’: empowerment within an Aboriginal adult literacy campaign

Abstract This case study details the impacts of an Aboriginal-led adult literacy campaign in Brewarrina between 2015 and 2017. Forming part of a wider investigation into literacy as a social determinant of health, the study explores the relationship between involvement in the literacy campaign and the capacity of graduates to take greater control of the conditions affecting their lives. Empowerment is used here as the central explanatory construct despite robust criticism of theoretical slippage. We argue that empowerment remains relevant particularly in the context of ongoing and entrenched disenfranchisement of the low-literate in Australian Aboriginal communities. Drawing on in-depth ‘yarning’ interviews, we find strong evidence of individual empowerment among graduates of the adult literacy campaign, particularly in terms of increased self-control and confidence. However, collective change such as increased participation and organisation at the community level is less apparent. This finding underscores two important aspects of empowerment. Firstly, like learning to read and write, the task of regaining personal and collective power can be a slow and difficult undertaking. Secondly, achieving empowerment is intimately linked to addressing the causes of disempowerment. This ultimately means tackling those power relations which impact choices, opportunities and well-being beyond the borders of individual's lives and communities.

Timor-Leste 1974–1975: Decolonisation, a nation-in-waiting and an adult literacy campaign

Abstract This article contributes to the strand of research within the New Literacy Studies that has investigated the ways in which adult literacy campaigns are bound up with social and political movements. The focus is on the adult literacy campaign initiated in Timor-Leste in 1974, as the process of decolonisation from Portugal got underway. This campaign was based on a Freirean approach to adult literacy and was initiated by Timorese students returning from Lisbon. The article draws on archival research and oral history interviews with people who volunteered to serve as adult literacy tutors at the time. The analysis presented in the main body of the article provides insights into the nature of the training, and into the tutors’ own understandings of the purpose of the campaign and of adult literacy pedagogy. It also draws attention to the difficult conditions in which this short-lived campaign was conducted in 1974 and 1975. The final section of the article details the worsening nature of the conditions encountered after the Indonesian invasion of December 1975 and concludes that, despite the constraints imposed by these conditions, this campaign has had an enduring symbolic legacy in the field of adult literacy education in Timor-Leste.

Frank Laubach and the Adult Literacy Campaign in South Korea in the 1950s–1960s

Frank Laubach and the Adult Literacy Campaign in South Korea in the 1950s–1960s

An Evaluative Study of Public Libraries in Delhi with Reference to Adult Literacy Initiative

The concept of literacy plays the most significant role in healthy and all round development of a nation. This study articulates the adult literacy campaign initiated in the county by taking a bird's eye view through the windows of public libraries in Delhi. This study covers almost all public libraries in Delhi operate by the government, private body and NGOs. It vividly addresses the reading habits, collection strength and service facilities offered to the general public.

Evaluative Thinking in Practice: Implications for Evaluation from Paulo Freire's Work in Guinea-Bissau


 
 
 
 Background: Evaluative thinking is rigorous analysis of evidence and reasoning to inform judgments of merit, worth, value, significance, and utility. Although formal concepts and definitions for evaluative thinking have only emerged recently, its practice has been around for many years. In-depth historical case studies of international evaluations using evaluative thinking principles are rare, especially the ones reported by those who were involved a half-century ago.
 Purpose: This article describes little-known but historically significant educational reform initiative in Guinea Bissau (West-Africa) in the 1970s supported by a group led by Paulo Freire, examining what occurred through the lens of evaluative thinking.
 Setting: In 1975, Freire and the Idac team were invited to develop a national adult literacy campaign in Guinea Bissau. Freire was already well known for his revolutionary ideas in “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.”
 Intervention: Idac team supported the government to adopt Freire’s education and action approach comprising three core strategies: (i) critically understand reality, (ii) conduct scientific studies and (iii) application of the new knowledge. While Freire and four senior members of Idac’s team visited the country every three months, two other members lived there for four years. The decision was to invest in experimental pilot projects while reforming what was possible within the existing traditional school curricula.
 
 
 Research Design: The authors conducted a retrospective developmental evaluation exemplifying what can be learned by examining past events through contemporary concepts.
 Data Collection and Analysis: In-depth interviews were conducted with key informants, especially Claudius Ceccon (one of the authors) who was a senior member of the Idac team working with Paulo Freire in Guinea Bissau. Also, several project original documents and relevant publications were reviewed. Thick description and content analysis were used to revisit that educational reform and examine its implications for evaluative thinking.
 Findings: Even though Freire’s most prominent ideas were developed before evaluation was considered as an established field, his approach of dialectic inquiry, critical reflection and taking action has influenced and still influences many leading scholars and practitioners within our (trans)discipline. While Freire did not use the phrase “evaluative thinking,” his process of critical engagement with local people to analyze and understand their situation and take action based on their reflections manifests core elements of what today would be considered embedded evaluative thinking. In political reforms around the world, the retrospective evaluation of what happened in Guinea Bissau reminds us of the importance of evaluative thinking and reflective dialogue – and the fragility of both in the face of political polarization and changes in leadership.
 
 
 
 
 Keywords: Paulo Freire; evaluative thinking; developmental evaluation; retrospective studies; Guinea Bissau.
 
 
 

Through the Eye of a Fly: Action Research as a Support for the South African National Literacy Campaign

Globally and across the African continent, the past decade has seen an increase in the commitment to reducing adult illiteracy, inspired among other things by the Education for All (EFA) drive to halve the incidence of illiteracy among adults and youth by 2015. While literacy campaigns were less common during the 1990s, the last decade saw a new impetus for mass adult literacy campaigns as a way of improving national literacy levels. This paper examines the South African endeavour to meet its EFA target through the implementation of the South African Kha Ri Gude Mass Literacy Campaign, which was launched by the South African government in 2008 with the aim of enliterating 4,7 million adults who had little or no education as a result of the apartheid legacy. The Campaign was deemed successful receiving a number of South African awards for best practice and its work in rural and impoverished communities including the international UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy (UNESCO 2016). This article focuses on how the campaign utilised action-oriented processes, specifically the methods of participatory action research (PAR), to enhance the achievement of its goals. The methods of PAR were embedded in the campaign structure, comprising clusters of communities of practice (COPs) which provided fora for educators to voice and address challenges. Moreover, since the Campaign was implemented in post-apartheid South Africa, the article shows how the Campaign operations were guided by the ethos of ubuntu as necessary for redress and empowerment.

Proxies and perplexities: What is the current state of adult (il)literacy in South Africa?

This article provides a detailed analysis of the data from a range of official sources that have been used to enumerate the number of people who can be described as totally or functionally illiterate and estimates whether illiteracy in South Africa can be reduced in the foreseeable future. The study examines the use of years of schooling (conventionally now set at Grade 7) as the proxy indicator of a person being functionally literate by the main sources, the General Population Censuses of 1996, 2001, and 2011 and the annual General Household Surveys and shows that these sources give somewhat contradictory and discordant estimates of the rate at which there is gradual decline of illiteracy in South Africa. Other indicators based on self reporting, also used in the Census and General Housing Surveys, show that a large number of adult South Africans have difficulty in reading, writing and calculating with numbers. The study also shows that the data presented by these surveys about participation in literacy and adult basic education and training classes is inaccurate. Note is made that currently South Africa does not make use of any means of direct testing of adult literacy. The article concludes with an exploration on whether South Africa is able to reach the goal of halving illiteracy by 2015. The target of such a reduction is necessarily based on what the baseline number of illiterates is as well as decision on whether full function literacy must be obtained or a merely a basic level of alphabetisation. Through a detailed estimation of the results of the Kha Ri Gude adult literacy campaign since 2008 a finding is made that the halving of illiteracy will be made, but only at the most basic level, and that attaining full functional literacy for all South Africans remains a major task.

Reproductive Health Information Needs and Access Among Rural Women in Nigeria: A Study of Nsukka Zone in Enugu State

This article presents a study of the reproductive health information needs and access practices of rural women in Nsukka Cultural Zone, Enugu State, South East Nigeria. Three hundred and fifty women from 14 rural Nsukka communities were surveyed and 335 responses analysed. It was found that the main reproductive health information needs of the women were related to infertility; use of contraception; abortion; prevention of sexually transmitted diseases; antenatal care; and postnatal care. The main existing sources of reproductive health information were found to be: friends and relations; hospitals and health centres; churches; women’s organisations; and radio and television. Fewer than half (46%) of the women participants were found to be accessing reproductive health information using their mobile phones. The author recommends enhanced rural development approaches that include: information provision through mobile communications; opening of rural libraries and information centres with Internet hubs; and sustainable adult literacy campaigns focused on reproductive health information.

<b>A Educação nas Páginas da Imprensa Católica (Ribeirão Preto-SP, 1949-1959)

Este texto analisa as representações sobre educação veiculadas na imprensa católica entre 1949 e 1959, período de redemocratização da sociedade brasileira, no qual ocorreu uma grande expansão do ensino público, resultando na contenção da educação confessional e nos embates entre católicos e liberais em torno da discussão da Lei de Diretrizes e Bases. Para a análise, tomamos como referência o jornal Diário de Notícias que circulou na cidade de Ribeirão Preto, interior do estado de São Paulo, publicado pela Cúria Diocesana. O estudo assinala como a imprensa católica abordou a temática da infância, os objetivos e a expansão do ensino primário, a inserção das classes populares na escola, a Campanha de Alfabetização de Adultos e as finalidades do ensino secundário propedêutico ou profissionalizante, apresentando posições conservadoras, pautadas na valorização dos valores cívico-patrióticos e na formação religiosa como fundamento da família e da sociedade.

Mass Communication and Mass Incommunication: A Revisit

The need to revisit Adesanoye’s view on the prevailing communication gap between the urban and the rural areas over twenty-five years ago which he termed “mass incommunication” was as a result of the fact that the situation, rather than improving is increasingly deteriorating. The authors in analyzing the situation discovered that even when and where concerted efforts are made by the media industry to involve the Nigerian populace in a participatory and interactive communication process, the success is always limited by factors such as poverty, illiteracy, infrastructure, ownership, legal constraints, technology and media commercialization. The writers suggested and agreed with other media scholars on the establishment of rural radio and community newspaper. The government must revive the Adult Literacy campaign to improve the literacy level among the populace. Finally, there should be a return to the era of public service broadcasting. In essence, government news media should be well funded so as to accommodate the interest of everybody in participatory and interactive process of communication. Keywords: Mass Communication, Mass Incommunication

Cuba’s “Yes, I Can” mass adult literacy campaign model in Timor-Leste and Aboriginal Australia: A comparative study

In the field of international adult education, mass literacy campaigns enjoyed wide support in the 20th century, when they were seen as a way to increase the participation of previously marginalised and excluded populations in national development. Cuba’s 1961 campaign achieved iconic status, but was only one of many successful campaigns in Latin America, Africa and Asia. In the 1990s, while mass literacy campaigns continued in many countries, scholarly interest in them declined under the influence of World Bank empirical critiques of their effectiveness and increasing postmodern scepticism towards the socialist “grand narrative” of liberation which underpinned some of the more famous examples. Recently, the mass campaign model has gained new impetus through Cuba’s international literacy missions, which use an approach known by its Spanish name, Yo, Si Puedo [Yes, I Can]. This paper reports on the deployment of this model in two very different settings, one being a national literacy campaign in Timor-Leste, a newly-independent island nation in the Asia–Pacific; and the other a pilot campaign in an Aboriginal community in Australia. The authors have utilised participatory action research methods to evaluate the model in both countries, and locate their comparative analysis in the theoretical tradition of popular education.

An Aboriginal Adult Literacy Campaign Pilot Study in Australia using Yes I Can

In 2012, the remote Aboriginal community of Wilcannia in western NSW hosted the first Australian pilot of a Cuban mass adult literacy campaign model known as Yes I Can. The aim was to investigate the appropriateness of this model in Aboriginal Australia. Building on an intensive community development process of ‘socialisation and mobilisation’, sixteen community members with very low literacy graduated from the basic literacy course, with the majority continuing on into post-literacy activities, further training and/or employment. The pilot was initiated by the National Aboriginal Adult Literacy Campaign Steering Committee (NAALCSC) consisting of Aboriginal leaders from the education and health sectors, and managed by the University of New England (UNE), working in partnership with the Wilcannia Local Aboriginal Land Council as the local lead agency. The pilot was supported by a Cuban academic who came to Australia for this purpose, and included a Participatory Action Research (PAR) evaluation led by the UNE Project Manager. In this paper, members of the project team and the NAALCSC describe the pilot and reflect on its outcomes.

Eradicating Ignorance: A Gendered Literacy Campaign

The Israeli adult literacy campaign, Operation Eradicate Ignorance ( Hamivtza lebi'ur haba'arut , 1964-1976), brought together two groups of women from different cultural backgrounds and education. This paper analyzes recollections of participants, collected in 2005-2008, in an attempt to evaluate the consequences of this cross-cultural gendered encounter. Data suggest that the confrontation between traditional female multitasking and modern skills led to opportunities for mutual learning and empowerment.

Defining Success, Defending Failure: Functions of Reported Talk

This article analyzes the functions of reported talk in interviews conducted with women who participated in a national adult literacy campaign. The distribution of voices helps the interviewees position themselves within the complex social relations and public discourses both during the historical time of action and the present time of interaction. Reported talk is a powerful discursive strategy for positioning, defining, and defending actions; the emerging story of the literacy campaign challenges both the hegemonic and counterhegemonic narrative of the campaign.

Popular Education for Adult Literacy and Health Development in Indigenous Australia

Abstract The focus of this paper is adult literacy, and the impact this has on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individual and community health. It directs attention to those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people and adults who have not benefited from the formal school education system, and who, as a consequence, have very low levels of basic English language literacy. Analysing data from a range of sources, I suggest that these people comprise as much as 35% of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adult population nationally, and a much bigger proportion in some communities and regions. Moreover, they are key to improving overall health outcomes in the population as a whole, because they are among the people most at risk. Drawing on research in countries of the global South over recent decades, the paper then suggests that one of the most effective ways to improve health outcomes and foster health development is through a popular mass adult literacy campaign. Popular education is not formal education, of the kind provided by schools, TAFEs and universities. It is “non-formal” education, provided on a mass scale, to people in marginalised and disadvantaged communities, as part of wider social and political movements for equality. The paper concludes that this is the most appropriate form of education to deal with the massive social and economic inequality at the heart of the social determinants of Indigenous health.