Literacy and Community Education

Part 1 of this paper sets out the Project's understanding of the concept of literacy and the nature of literacy learning in adult life.

Part 2 of this paper explains how the Project relates these ideas to the three main purposes of the community education process: promoting personal development, building community capacity and investing in community learning.

CA Macrae January 1999

Summary

• 'Literacy' and 'being literate' are not stable definitions but concepts that constantly change in tandem with changes in language, technologies and social organisation.
• Although literacy is often thought of as a skill or set of skills, literacy involves a range of capabilities involving knowledge, skills and understanding.
• The literacies learned in school do not simply transfer to adult life. Schools lay the foundations but they are unable to encompass or anticipate all future uses of literacy.
• Adults learn new literacies in the workplace, home and local community. These new contexts provide learning opportunities via apprenticeship, networks of support, access to resources and contact with new literacy modes and codes as these develop.
• People who are excluded from full participation in social, economic, political and cultural life do not share the same opportunities for adult literacy learning.
• The most excluded are caught in a mutually reinforcing cycle where their lack of opportunities limits the demands made on their literacy, which in turn limits both their capabilities and their confidence as literacy learners.
• Community education approaches to adult literacy should combine courses and projects with carrying out research, enhancing networks of support, creating access to resources and giving advice to external agencies.
• The combination of adult learning opportunities and indirect support can break into and ameliorate the effects of the damaging cycle that prevents the most excluded adults from developing their literacies.
• Envisaging a full range of community education approaches to adult literacy learning is an important step in realising community educationís potential as an agent for change.

Part 1 Literacy and Adults Literacy Learning

• In the 1870's being literate was measured in terms of the ability to sign oneís name on a legal document. By this measure 17% of Scots were 'not literate'.
• In the 1970ís, the BBC's 'On the Move' campaign was based on the ability to read and write to the standard expected of a nine year old. By this measure 7% of Scots were 'not literate'.
• In 1997, the OECD's International Adult Literacy Survey defined being literate as the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals and to develop one's knowledge and potential. The survey was based on identifying 5 levels of ability rather than a simple 'literate' / 'not literate' dichotomy and suggested over 20% of Scots are at the lowest level of literacy ability.

 Looking at these three points in time shows how 'literacy' and 'being literate' are not stable definitions but concepts that constantly change in tandem with changes in language, technologies and social organisation.

The social, political and economic shifts that have taken place since the beginnings of the industrial revolution have radically altered both our expectations of mass literacy and our understanding of the literacy capabilities needed to actively and critically participate in the social, political, economic and cultural life of our society.

Literacy is sensitive to change because, although it is often thought of as a skill or set of skills learned in school and transferred more or less directly to adult life, this notion obscures a more complex reality.

Literacy involves several kinds of capabilities:

Skills - the mental and physical abilities needed to recall, recognise and reproduce letters, numbers and symbols (e.g. commas, percentage signs etc.) Knowledge - of word meanings and grammar, of formats and conventions and of how the meaning is shaped by the immediate situation and purpose as well as the wider social and cultural context Understanding - the conscious awareness of text as shaping and shaped by social relations; the critical abilities needed to question textual meanings and to interpret the social purposes and interests that texts serve or frustrate.

Literacy involves lifelong and life-wide learning:

School literacies are predictable because their main purpose is for the individual learner to demonstrate competence to the teacher and they are stable because they are regulated internally by teachers and externally by examiners. School literacy learning lays the foundations for adult literacy learning; the process is not completed in school because schools are unable to encompass or anticipate all future uses of literacy. Adult literacies can be much more diverse and less predictable than school literacies are. Acceptable standards can vary depending on the situation and its participants; an adultís literacy tasks are often carried out jointly, with the support or on behalf of others; there can be mutual negotiation about formats, purposes and content. Adults learn new literacies in the workplace, home or local community, often through a process of apprenticeship to a more experienced person.

Literacy involves complex and developing contexts, modes and codes:

• Adults use literacy differently in distinguishable though interrelated contexts or domains of their lives: public life (government, medical establishment, the church), private life (the home, local associations, leisure activities), working life and educational life.

• New modes of communication such as electronic mail, web pages and digital TV and new technologies for printing and copying are creating different ways of making and reading messages based on new possibilities for using images, logos etc.

• Meanings are coded in a variety of ways: a news article or fictional piece (prose literacy) differs from a form, graph and timetable (document literacy) and also from a leaflet with numbers embedded in text stating interest rates or savings (quantitative literacy). Documents, on page or screen, can combine these codes.

Conceptualising literacy as a range of capabilities employed in diverse, but equally significant, contexts using a variety of modes and codes emphasises the complex and dynamic relationship between the reader or writer, the text, the immediate situation and the broader social context. This way of conceptualising literacy incorporates the earlier notion of skills for breaking the (letters, numbers and symbols) 'code' and expands on it. It recognises that the reader and writer have to critically interpret and evaluate multiple possible meanings. Increasingly, researchers and practitioners are describing their work in terms of adults' literacy practices or literacies, to emphasise the dynamic and developing diversity of the literacies encountered in adult life and to encompass a broad notion of the capabilities involved in being literate.

Literacies are learned in adult life:

The full range of knowledge, skills and understanding needed for adults' critical and confident use of literacy are acquired via participation in new contexts for literacy on the basis of the foundations laid in school. New contexts, which we may engage in as private individuals, consumers, citizens, students or employees, offer the opportunity to learn new literacies by

• Becoming apprenticed to more experienced people to learn the literacies of a specific situation
• Using networks of support to sustain and support unfamiliar literacies until greater autonomy is acquired
• Having access to literacy resources (e.g. printed materials, word processors, calculators, dictionaries, copiers etc.)
• Having contact with new literacy modes and codes as these develop.

Three key issues arise from this way of understanding adults' literacy learning:

1.People who are excluded from full participation in social, economic, political and cultural life do not share the same opportunities for adult literacy learning via apprenticeship, networks of support, access to resources or contact with new developments.

2.These adult learning opportunities may be as significant in influencing a personís literacy capabilities as are the foundations for effective literacy laid in school.

3.People with limited literacy opportunities are caught in a mutually reinforcing cycle where their lack of opportunities limits the demands made on their literacy, which in turn limits both their capabilities and their confidence as literacy learners.

Part 2 Adult Literacies and Community Education

The Adult Literacies in Scotland Project will support local authorities, voluntary organisations and FE colleges who use community education approaches and are primary deliverers of adult literacy.

The Osler Working Group Report 'Communities: Change through Learning' outlines a vision for Scotland as a democratic and socially just society that enables all of its citizens to develop their potential to the full and to have the capacity, individually and collectively, to meet the challenge of change.

The Osler Working Group believes that community education approaches have a powerful relevance to the Governmentís current policy agenda on social inclusion, lifelong learning, and active citizenship. They propose a radical shift where community education becomes a major contributor to building the vision outlined above. In order to achieve this, there needs to be a focus on community educationís particular ways of working to develop skills, knowledge and capacity in community contexts and on three main purposes:

• investing in community learning
• building community capacity
• promoting personal development

The Osler Report sees literacy as an example of essential skills provision within the personal development function, however community education approaches to adults' literacy learning should be broader. Community education approaches to adult literacy should combine:

Courses and projects

Research

Enhancing networks of support

Creating access to / investing in resources

Advice to external agencies

• Courses and projects provide adult learning opportunities for individuals and groups who have identified their own literacy learning needs through a guidance process. Courses and projects may be short or long term.

Such courses and projects should be underpinned by indirect support for literacy learning. As noted above, adults with limited literacy capabilities experience a mutually reinforcing cycle of limited demands and limited opportunities. When surveyed, the majority describe themselves as 'satisfied' with their literacy skills in their everyday lives.

Carrying out research, enhancing networks of support, creating access to / investing in resources, and giving advice to external agencies can all function as forms of indirect support for literacy learning. They can address the stigma that is, at present, attached to adult literacy learning. They can break into and ameliorate the effects of the damaging cycle that prevents the most excluded adults from developing their literacies.

• Research increases our understanding of the literacies encountered and created by excluded groups and should inform the work of programme planners.
• Enhancing networks of support enables excluded people to complete literacy tasks with the help of local individuals and groups where they choose to do so.
• Investing in and creating access to literacy resources counters exclusion and equalises opportunities for individuals and community groups.
• Advice to external agencies enables them to address the ways their literacies exclude groups and individuals whose literacies are different.

The strong correlation between limited literacy capabilities and poverty, ill health, unemployment and poor housing points to the contribution learning can make as a resource for countering inequalities and as a resource for developing the knowledge, skills and understanding to challenge and change inequalities. Envisaging a full range of community education approaches to adult literacy learning is an important step in realising community educationís potential as an agent for change.

The Osler Report recommends that local authorities be required to produce a community learning plan. Councils are to consult with voluntary organisations, FE colleges, adult guidance networks etc. in developing their plan and to involve learners and communities as a starting point in the planning process, rather than just as end users. The following table illustrates nine examples of adult literacy work, using the current policy fields and the three community education functions proposed in the Osler Report:

CA Macrae January 1999

Appendix 1

Community Education's Values and Principles

Ceveís' document 'Guidelines for Graduate and Post Graduate Qualifying Community Education Training' (revised 1995, SCEC) explains the value base and principle underpinning community education as follows.

The underlying values at the heart of community education are that education:

• Respects the individual and the right to self determination
• Respects and values pluralism
• Values equality and develops anti-discriminatory practice
• Encourages collective action and collaborative working relationships
• Promotes learning as a lifelong process
• Encourages a participating democracy

Community education providers should encourage:

• Equality of opportunity, positive action and open access particularly for disadvantaged learners
• Active participation of learners in the process of identifying learning needs, planning a learning programme and monitoring it
• Flexibility of approach, covering content, location and style
• Recognition that learning can relate to personal, social, economic and political experiences as well as more academic and vocational subjects
• An emphasis upon learning as well as teaching, and on matching the content and manner of delivery to the needs of the people concerned
• A positive response by participants to change and to the demands made on them in the present and the future

Appendix 2

The Context of Adult Literacy Education in Scotland

Unlike many other European countries, universal literacy was a focus of Church and State attention in Scotland from the 17th century. The Calvinist Church's aspiration for all to have access to the Word of God led to legislation requiring the provision of a schoolmaster in every parish at the landowner's expense. As a result, shortly before the Education Acts of the late 19th century introduced compulsory schooling, only 11% of Scottish men and 21% of Scottish women could not sign their names on public documents, compared with 30% of men and 41% of women in England and Wales. Although the education system was not in practice universal and being literate as an adult is not an inevitable outcome of being educated as a child, by the 19th century it had become a source of shame to be unable to read the Bible in the Kirk.

Adult Literacy emerged as a field of adult education in Britain through the BBC's 'On the Move' Campaign in the early 1970s. At that time the task was seen as a single, one off intervention to address 'illiteracy' amongst an estimated 9 million British adults with a reading age below nine. People responding to the TV programmes were matched up with volunteers, frequently meeting in the learnerís home in privacy and using materials based on primary school approaches to reading. The Scottish Adult Literacy Agency worked to secure what they described as 'well established and thriving adult literacy schemes' in virtually all regions. By 1983 there were 17,850 literacy students in Scotland, mainly learning 1:1 with a volunteer tutor in the home or a local centre in programmes organised by local authoritiesí Community Education Services.

The Agency was succeeded by the Scottish Adult Literacy Unit and then by the Scottish Adult Basic Education Unit (SABEU). The use of the term 'ABE' signalled an intention to move away from a literacy only curriculum to include other areas. Some Councils developed English as a Second Language provision within ABE, others made no distinct ESL provision and some developed ESL as a completely separate programme.

In the early 1980s SABEU tried to move away from the individualised, remedial model of the early literacy campaign by defining ABE as a broad range of essential adult learning including life management, confidence building, learning about health issues and learning for democratic participation. However SABEU reported that although all Scottish Councils made some ABE provision, "some areas have barely developed from offering basic help with reading, writing and numeracy, while others (generally with the benefit of outside funding) have evolved more comprehensive services, covering a wide range of learning". In 1987 research found that 1 in 10 adults felt they had difficulties and they were more concerned about writing and spelling than reading.

In the mid 1980s ABE provision suffered severely from local authority cutbacks and SABEU was absorbed into the Scottish Community Education Council (SCEC) with accompanying staff losses. Scottish literacy programmes continued to rely heavily on volunteer tutors working with individual students, although by 1990 SCEC reported that a trend had begun for pairs to meet in centres rather than at home.

By 1993, the HMI's Report on ABE in Scotland found a range of provision operating under the general term ABE, from access / return to learn courses to computing or sewing courses. The HMI expressed concerns about programmes dealing directly with literacy, citing some examples where students were using primary school materials or completing repetitive or irrelevant tasks. He suggested that programmes dealing with parenting, health issues and domestic skills were more effective and recommended that ABE become an 'integral and inseparable strand of a much wider educational provision'.

Prior to and during Local Government Reorganisation many Councils changed their community education / adult education policy and structure, reduced staffing levels and renamed their ABE programmes 'Essential Skills'. These changes occurred partly on the basis of the report and also because many new Councils could not support the same levels of staff or services. By 1998 the numbers of students participating in ABE had fallen by at least 40% compared with 1992 figures. Recent research suggests that there are now approximately 6,000 students in Scotland and that the majority of these places are still provided directly by councils. The remainder are provided by voluntary organisations (primarily for people with disabilities) and by FE colleges (generally for young people).

Over the last 25 years Scottish adult literacy provision has been very varied in its nature, structure and level of funding. The guidelines and recommendations produced to date by the various national agencies (SCALA, SCALU, SABEU and SCEC) have needed to be very general to cover this diversity and much of the existing advice (e.g. on guidance, open learning, evaluation or supporting volunteers) has focussed on areas relevant to any community based adult education. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many practitioners have turned to BSA (previously ALBSU) publications, although these are written for an English and Welsh context.

Literacy as a strand of community based adult education relates to three of the current Governmentís priorities: lifelong learning, social inclusion and active citizenship. A number of recent Government documents have referred to adult literacy as part of a basic skills agenda: the prospectus for the University for Industry, the COSLA task group consultation paper 'Promoting Learning & developing Communities' and the Green Paper 'Opportunity Scotland'. Very recently the Minister of State for Education has announced that Councils will be expected to produce Community Learning Plans incorporating targets for adult literacy and numeracy. It is too soon to know how far this announcement will influence policy and practice in the field.

CA Macrae December 1998

Research Sources

Barton D. & Hamilton M. 'Local Literacies' Routledge, London 1998

Blacke F. & Russell P. 'Literacy in Scotland 1998' Unpublished Research Paper SCEC, Edinburgh 1998

Bynner J. & Pearsons S. 'It Doesn't Get Any Better: The impact of poor basic skills on the lives of 37 year olds' BSA, London 1997

Carey S. et al. 'Adult Literacy in Britain' The Stationery Office, London 1997

Hamilton M. & Stasinopoulos M. 'Literacy, Numeracy and Adults: Evidence from the National Child Development Study' ALBSU, London 1987

Houston R. A. 'Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity' CUP, Cambridge 1985

Walker M. 'A History of Adult Basic Education in Scotland' Unpublished M. Ed. Thesis, Dundee 1994