Nonliterate Adults Research Articles

A Proposed Theory for the Pedagogic Practices in Alternative Learning System (ALS)

This study explored the pedagogic practices on modalities in facilitating instruction and assessing learning employed for the PDLs, IPs, and Non-Literate Adults as group of learners in the ALS and consequently propose a theory along these dimensions. Data were obtained from 18 purposively chosen programs-implementers through semi-structured, observations of class activities, and field notes. These were analyzed through Charmaz’ framework on grounded theory data analyses. Results of the findings showed that educational goods and services are delivered through flexible modalities specifically face-to-face aided with modern technologies and home visitation aided with traditional technologies. Assessment in learning, on the other hand, is realized in multi-modal fashion specifically trough performance-based, module-based, and portfolio assessment formats. These findings point towards a theoretical conception that the delivery of educational good and services is unique and dependent on the circumstance, condition, and situation of the target learners and assessing the learners’ learning is actualized in a multi-modal fashion in response and recognition of the learners’ diversity, diverse learning needs and teaching and learning environment. With these theoretical conceptions, the Granular Learning Theory is proposed. The basic tenet of the theory is that instructional delivery and assessment in learning are case-dependent.

Can Nonliterates Interact as Easily as Literates with a Virtual Reality System? A Usability Evaluation of VR Interaction Modalities

The aim of the study is twofold: to assess the usability of a virtuality (VR) interaction designed for nonliterate users in accordance with ISO-Standard 9241-11 and to compare the feasibility of two interaction modalities (motion controllers and real hands) considering the impact of VR sickness. To accomplish these goals, two levels were designed for a VR prototype application. The system usability scale (SUS) was used for self-reported satisfaction, while effectiveness and efficiency were measured based on observations and logged data. These measures were then analyzed using exploratory factor analysis, and the ones with high factor loading were selected. For this purpose, two studies were conducted. The first study investigated the effects of three independent variables on the interaction performance of a VR system, i.e., “User Type,” “Interaction Modality,” and “Use of New Technology.” The SUS results suggest that all the participants were satisfied with the application. The results of one-way ANOVA tests showed that there were no significant differences in the use of the VR application among the three selected user types. However, some measures, such as task completion time in level one, showed significant differences between user types, suggesting that nonliterate users had difficulty with the grab-and-move interaction. The results of the multivariate analysis using statistically significant variables from both ANOVA tests were also reported to verify the effect of modern technology on interactivity. The second study evaluated the interaction performance of nonliterate adults in a VR application using two independent variables: “Interaction Modality” and “Years of Technological Experience.” The results of the study showed a high level of satisfaction with the VR application, with an average satisfaction score of 90.75. The one sample T-tests indicated that the nonliterate users had difficulty using their hands as the interaction modality. The study also revealed that nonliterates may struggle with the poses and gestures required for hand interaction. The results suggest that until advancements in hand-tracking technology are made, controllers may be easier for nonliterate adults to use compared to using their hands. The results underline the importance of designing VR applications that are usable and accessible for nonliterate adults and can be used as guidelines for creating VR learning experiences for nonliterate adults.

Educational Radio Broadcasting and its Effectiveness on Adult Literacy in Lagos

Education has been identified as one of the most important ways to achieve national development. With 3 million non-literate adults in Lagos State, the commercial nerve center of the nation, radio becomes a veritable medium to teach such adults who, for several reasons including economic, do not have the opportunity of formal schooling. The study assessed the effectiveness of educational radio broadcasting for adult literacy in Lagos State, Nigeria. Five hundred and five (505) adult learners participating in Lagos is Learning Project were purposively selected. Findings showed that a majority (62.4%) of the study participants used the instructional radio program, Mooko Mooka, to prepare for classroom instruction, while 53.5% of the study participants used the program for revision. Findings also revealed that 40.6% of them listened to the program three times per week and this implied that frequency of exposure could influence literacy skill. The study concluded that radio instructional techniques were effective in promoting adult literacy and therefore recommended that the radio listening sessions should be increased as part of efforts to reduce adult illiteracy in the country. Also, community media centers should be created in different communities to encourage group listening where learners can be supervised.

Coarticulation varies by consonant identity in adult and child speech

Consonant-vowel coarticulation varies by manner of articulation: speakers coarticulate less between segments in V[stop] sequences than V[glide]. There are different approaches to modelling consonant identity effects upon coarticulation (Iskarous et al., 2013). However, these effects have not been studied in non-literate populations—young children or non-literate adults. This is relevant since literacy heightens phoneme awareness, affecting coarticulation. 40 South Bolivian Quechua speakers who were not literate in the language, 30 children (aged 5–10) and 10 adults, completed a picture-prompted word elicitation task. Coarticulation was measured between [a] and the consonants /p, t, k, kh, qh, ch, s, m, w/ in VC and CV syllables. Because the child speech apparatus poses problems for typical spectral analysis, we quantify coarticulation as the Euclidean distance between Mel frequency cepstral coefficient vectors averaged over adjacent phones (Gerosa et al., 2006). Mixed effects models predicting the Euclidean distance between adjacent phones show that all age groups are sensitive to changes in consonant manner. Adults and children restrained coarticulation more between sequences containing obstruents than glides or liquids. These results suggest that literacy and heightened phoneme awareness are not required for consonant identity to affect coarticulation.Consonant-vowel coarticulation varies by manner of articulation: speakers coarticulate less between segments in V[stop] sequences than V[glide]. There are different approaches to modelling consonant identity effects upon coarticulation (Iskarous et al., 2013). However, these effects have not been studied in non-literate populations—young children or non-literate adults. This is relevant since literacy heightens phoneme awareness, affecting coarticulation. 40 South Bolivian Quechua speakers who were not literate in the language, 30 children (aged 5–10) and 10 adults, completed a picture-prompted word elicitation task. Coarticulation was measured between [a] and the consonants /p, t, k, kh, qh, ch, s, m, w/ in VC and CV syllables. Because the child speech apparatus poses problems for typical spectral analysis, we quantify coarticulation as the Euclidean distance between Mel frequency cepstral coefficient vectors averaged over adjacent phones (Gerosa et al., 2006). Mixed effects models predicting the Euclide...

Learning to read for the first time as adult immigrants in Finland

Against the backdrop of increasing global humanitarian migration to highly literate countries and the resulting necessity and challenge to provide language and literacy education to non-literate or low-literate adult second language (L2) learners, this article calls for more research on a new population of late literacy learners, particularly in Finland. The article begins by outlining the pressing necessity for research on this special group of L2 learners who has traditionally been ignored by Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research. It will then go on to illuminate essential components of developing reading literacy, drawing on relevant previous research on pre-literates. Further, the role of orthography, in particular the shallow transparency of the Finnish language, are critically examined with regard to alphabetic literacy. As adult non-literacy is a relatively new phenomenon in the highly literate society of Finland, there is a scarcity of research on how non-literate adults acquire Finnish. Growing academic interest and emerging Literacy Education and Second Language Learning for Adults with little or no schooling (LESLLA) research in Finland, with focus on reading literacy skills, is presented and discussed. The article highlights the possibilities of technology to enhance the individual literacy process for LESLLA learners and presents the Digital Literacy Instructor (DigLin) as one technology-enhanced practice environment for the very first steps in learning to decode the alphabetic code. Finally, conclusions on LESLLA learners’ late literacy acquisition and a future research perspective are drawn, emphasizing the potential of computer-assisted language learning (CALL).

Absence of Altruism? Female Disadvantage in Private School Enrollment in India

Women make up one-half of the world’s population, though two-thirds of the world’s non-literate adults are women, which highlight the pervasive denial of the basic human right to education experienced by women across the globe. While there is a sizeable literature on gender discrimination in girls’ schooling, we know very little about girls’ access to private schooling, despite its rapid growth around the world in recent years. Using two nationally representative datasets from household surveys conducted in India in 2005 and 2012, our paper aims to bridge this gap by examining the role of gender in private school choice. We argue that the gender of the child is potentially endogenous in India because parents continue to have children until they have a son. To redress this potential endogeneity, we exploit the variation in private school choice among 7-18 year olds born to the same parents within the same household in an attempt to minimize both child-invariant and child-varying household-level omitted variable bias. We then explore the nature of female (dis)advantage across different types of households, communities and years with a view to assess the role of parental preferences in this respect and its change, if any. The analysis thus allows us to provide new evidence for the causal effect of gender on private school choice in India. Significant female disadvantage exists in both survey years, though the size of this disadvantage varies across sub-samples and years. Female disadvantage is significantly higher among younger (relative to eldest) girls and also in northern and northwestern (relative to western) regions, but it is lower among girls from poor (relative to rich) households, Christian (relative to Hindu high caste) households, and those with more educated mothers. Our results are robust, irrespective of whether or not we restrict the sample to those born to a household head. We infer that the observed within-household variations in female disadvantage across subsamples reflect variations in non-altruistic parental preferences linked to deeply held cultural norms (for example, sons acting as old-age security and the exogamy of girls), access to schools and other public goods, and also job opportunities and returns to schooling for girls, thus posing considerable challenges in the attempt to secure ‘education for all.’

Lifelong learning and the pursuit of a vision for sustainable development in Botswana

This paper analyses Botswana's commitment to lifelong learning policy and discusses how it can help the state achieve its vision for sustainable development. First, it argues that while Botswana is renowned for its economic success, it still fails to address positively such traditional challenges as poverty, unemployment and income inequality, which are increasing disproportionately, especially among the youth and non-literate adults. These structural problems can be attributable partly to the low quality of education, which does not enable learners to reduce their risks and vulnerabilities. The paper outlines the concepts of lifelong learning and sustainable development and work from there to analyse the national education policy. It is acknowledged that the state made commendable progress in delivering basic, extension and continuing education since adopting lifelong learning in 1994. However, the delivery failed to use education to transform people's lives. The education itself failed to balance quantity with quality effectively to inculcate a culture of democracy. These issues need to be critically addressed because they invariably hamper Botswana's efforts to deliver quality education and attain its vision for sustainable development. Finally, the paper suggests that the education system should incorporate lifelong learning principles, effectively involve learners in decision making and teach for empowerment.

Early Years Literacy in Indian Urban Schools: Structural, Social and Pedagogical Issues

Literacy has been a crucial aspect of education as a human right for over 50 years, but this basic right remains unassured for at least 700 million adults worldwide. In 1999, UNESCO acknowledged that schools are not making the expected contribution to increasing national literacy rates or providing individuals with the literacy skills they need. The relationship between schooling and literacy is an acute issue in India: the absolute numbers of non-literate adults, many of whom have failed to become literate at school, continue to increase; and high proportions of children are not achieving adequately in literacy at school. The paper presents a socially situated examination, drawing in part on collaborative action research, of how a small sample of primary teachers approach literacy teaching and learning in socio-economic contexts of disadvantage. The paper identifies structural, social and pedagogical constraints to effective literacy teaching and learning in schools and in conclusion, draws out the implications for teacher development of a relative neglect of literacy teaching and learning in Indian vernacular languages.

Early Years Literacy in Indian Urban Schools: Structural, Social and Pedagogical Issues

Literacy has been a crucial aspect of education as a human right for over 50 years, but this basic right remains unassured for at least 700 million adults worldwide. In 1999, UNESCO acknowledged that schools are not making the expected contribution to increasing national literacy rates or providing individuals with the literacy skills they need. The relationship between schooling and literacy is an acute issue in India: the absolute numbers of non-literate adults, many of whom have failed to become literate at school, continue to increase; and high proportions of children are not achieving adequately in literacy at school. The paper presents a socially situated examination, drawing in part on collaborative action research, of how a small sample of primary teachers approach literacy teaching and learning in socio-economic contexts of disadvantage. The paper identifies structural, social and pedagogical constraints to effective literacy teaching and learning in schools and in conclusion, draws out the implications for teacher development of a relative neglect of literacy teaching and learning in Indian vernacular languages.

The role of literacy in the conceptualization of words: Data from Kannada-speaking children and non-literate adults

‘Metalinguistic skill’ has emerged as an important measure of the sophistication of an individual’s mastery of language. Some of the impetus for studies of metalinguistic skills, stemmed from an interest in its contribution to the acquisition of literacy. The central debate in these studies has been the issue of whether metalinguistic skills appear as a product of cognitive development or as a product of literacy instruction. In addition, there is also an increased interest in the cross-linguistic perspectives, given that replication of some of this research in non-alphabetic scripts are at variance with the earlier studies on alphabetic scripts. In the current study, identical experiments were conducted on a group of pre-school children and a group of non-literate adults, in Kannada, to investigate their understanding of the relationship between written language and oral language in particular their understanding of the relationship between the ‘word’ and its ‘referent’ and the effect of literacy acquisition on the same. Overall, the results support the view that acquisition of literacy has a significant influence on an individual’s conception of words, though an interaction between cognitive maturation and literacy exposure cannot be ruled out.

Place of Environmental Print in Reading Development: Evidence From Nonliterate Adults

This study investigated the knowledge and strategies that nonliterate adults use to identify print. Participants were 20 low-socioeconomic status Brazilian adults ranging in age from 20 to 74 years. Participants' ability to identify common environmental signs displaying varying degrees of contextual information was investigated along with their ability to learn to read simplified spellings of words written to contain two types of cues, either phonetic cues linking letters to sounds or visual cues enhancing the distinctiveness of each spelling's appearance. Their ability to invent phonetic spellings was also tested. The results showed a clear dissociation between the tasks. Participants learned to read the phonetic spellings more easily than the visual spellings, indicating that they were capable of using alphabetic cues to read words. They also used their letter knowledge to spell some of the sounds in words. However, they did not use letter knowledge to read or remember words in environmental signs. They read the signs only when presented in their full context, not when printed in isolation, and they failed to notice altered letters in the signs. These results argue strongly against the hypothesis that environmental print reading provides an important foundation for learning about the alphabetic system. More likely, reading signs and labels alphabetically emerges as a result of learning to read.

Designing effective computer-based education to teach reading to nonliterate adults

The basic skills learning system is a modularized network of computer-assisted tutorials, drills, tests, printed materials, and videotaped presentations directed at improving the basic reading, math, and language skills of adults who have mastered these skills at a level above third grade but below the eighth. Performance data from demonstration projects in Maryland, Texas, and Minnesota indicate that adult and adolescent learners made significant grade-level gains in reading and math and that dropout rates were reduced from 60% to less than 5% in some adult basic learning centers. These dramatic gains seem directly attributable to computer technology which utilizes effective instructional strategies. The purpose of this paper is to present the instructional rationale used in the design of this learning system and to define some of the teaching strategies which seem to directly impact reading achievement gains.

Cross-cultural Invariance in Story Recall

MANDLER, JEAN M.; SCRIBNER, SYLVIA; COLE, MICHAEL; and DEFOREST, MARSHA. CrOSs-cultural Invariance in Story Recall. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1980, 51, 19-26. A comparison was made of recall of stories by Liberian nonschooled children, nonliterate adults, nonschooled literate adults, and schooled literate adults. These data were then compared to similar data from American children and adults. Highly similar patterns of recall were found for all groups, although there was improvement in performance from childhood to adulthood. The data were used to support a hypothesis of the universality of certain kinds of schematic organization and their control of memorial processes.

Three Functional Tests of Oral Proficiency

This paper is a description of three experimental tests that attempt to measure communicative competence. The Spanish-English Dominance Assessment Test was developed to permit assignment of sixand sevenyear-old children to appropriate streams in a New Mexico school with a bilingual education program. The Navajo-English Dominance Interview, also intended to be used with six-year-olds beginning school, was used to validate teacher ratings in a study of Navajo language maintenance. The Oral Placement Test for Adults is an experimental instrument to place non-literate adults in appropriate levels of an ESL program. The three tests display certain common principles in developing useable functional tests. Each is closely tied to the practical situation for which it was prepared and is intended to be used by relatively untrained testers with the simplest possible materials. Results are gross, classifying rather than ranking students, but this is appropriate to the goals.