Int Rev Educ (2016) 62:751–770 DOI 10.1007/s11159-016-9602-5 ORIGINAL PAPER
Adult literacy benefits? New opportunities for research into sustainable development David Post1
Published online: 31 October 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht and UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning 2016
Abstract Understandings of ‘‘literacy’’ broadened after the United Nations Development Decade of the 1960s. The corresponding research into the benefits of literacy also widened its focus beyond economic growth. The effects of adult literacy and its correlates appeared diffuse with the rise of New Literacy Studies, and the scholarship on consequences seemed less essential to advocates following the rise of a human rights perspective on education. In 2016 the agenda for literacy research has returned – but at a higher level – to concern over its benefits. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have reintegrated literacy research within an agenda to understand the channels through which literacy skills might effect change. This article briefly reviews progress in adult literacy, touches on existing perspectives on literacy, and then illustrates four recent sources of information useful in the revitalised agenda offered by the SDGs. Data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) study conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Values Survey (WVS), and the World Bank’s Skills Toward Employment and Productivity (STEP) study are now available to researchers wishing to link educational change with attitudinal and behavioural change. Another important resource are the emerging data on mobile learning. By integrating literacy into the SDGs, literacy researchers can reveal the channels through which literacy can contribute to social welfare and transformation. Keywords literacy sustainable development evaluation Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) World Values Survey (WVS) Skills Toward Employment and Productivity (STEP) & David Post
[email protected] 1
Department of Education Policy Studies, College of Education, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
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Re´sume´ Avantages de l’alphabe´tisation des adultes ? Nouveaux champs de recherche sur le de´veloppement durable – Les conceptions de l’ « alphabe´tisation » se sont e´largies dans les anne´es 1960 apre`s la premie`re De´cennie des Nations Unies pour le de´veloppement. La recherche affe´rente sur les avantages de l’alphabe´tisation a e´galement e´tendu sa dominante au-dela` de la croissance e´conomique. Les effets de l’alphabe´tisation des adultes et de ses corre´lats semblaient diffus avec les Nouvelles e´tudes sur l’alphabe´tisation, et les travaux universitaires sur ses conse´quences apparaissaient moins importants a` ses de´fenseurs apre`s l’e´mergence d’une perspective de l’e´ducation sous l’angle des droits fondamentaux. Le programme de recherche sur l’alphabe´tisation est revenu en 2016, et a` un niveau supe´rieur, a` la pre´occupation sur ses bienfaits. Les Objectifs de de´veloppement durable (ODD) des Nations Unies ont replace´ la recherche sur l’alphabe´tisation dans un programme afin de cerner par quels canaux les compe´tences de base peuvent induire un changement. Cet article recense brie`vement les avance´es en alphabe´tisation des adultes, aborde les perspectives actuelles de l’alphabe´tisation, puis illustre quatre sources re´centes d’information, utiles au programme redynamise´ que proposent les ODD. Les donne´es de l’e´tude mene´e par l’Organisation de coope´ration et de de´veloppement e´conomiques (OCDE) sur le Programme pour l’e´valuation internationale des compe´tences des adultes (PEICA), l’Enqueˆte sur les valeurs mondiales (WVS) et l’enqueˆte de la Banque mondiale sur les compe´tences au service de l’emploi et de la productivite´ (STEP) sont de´sormais accessibles aux chercheurs de´sireux de relier changement e´ducatif et changement d’attitude et de comportement. Les donne´es e´mergentes sur l’apprentissage mobile constituent une autre ressource majeure. En rapportant l’alphabe´tisation aux ODD, les chercheurs en la matie`re peuvent re´ve´ler par quels canaux l’alphabe´tisation peut contribuer au bien-eˆtre social et a` la transformation de la socie´te´. Are we still asking about the ‘‘benefits’’ of adult literacy in 2016? The question posed by the title of this article seems retrograde at first glance, a throw-back to the Development Decade of the 1960s. But one can also argue that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), although they avoid precise targets for adult literacy such as those set by the Education for All movement (WEF 2000), better integrate literacy into broader global progress than was the case with past goals. It is true that adult literacy gets little special attention within SDG 4 and its associated education targets. Target 4.6 aims only for a ‘‘substantial proportion of adults, both men and women [to] achieve literacy and numeracy’’ (UN 2015). And yet Target 4.7, by focusing on the social consequences of education, and on education as a prerequisite for progress towards other goals, could renew a research agenda on the impact of literacy. Implicitly, the SDGs raise expectations of what this progress in literacy ought to accomplish more generally. This article touches briefly on the measured progress in adult literacy, and then discusses two conceptual movements which have shaped the scholarly investigations of this progress over the past generation. The SDGs raise old types of questions which are newly researchable. In the second half of this article, I therefore highlight four new sources of information which could contribute to the research
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agenda on the wider benefits of literacy. These include lesser-known features of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) surveys conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and two recent cross-national surveys which are ignored in most education research; the World Values Survey (WVS) and the World Bank’s Skills Toward Employment and Productivity (STEP) survey. In addition, I review new information being collected about mobile learning and literacy. First, it is necessary to recall that some of the issues represented by the SDGs are indeed old, not new. The United Nations’ Development Decade (1960–1970) was established in the General Assembly’s sixteenth session by Resolution 1710 (UN 1961), which explicitly linked education to economic development. According to this resolution, the Secretary-General was requested to take ‘‘measures to accelerate the elimination of illiteracy, hunger, and disease’’ (ibid., p. 18, item 4 (d)), with the larger aim of supporting development in less developed countries. During the 1960s, economists suspected that a threshold level of literacy was a necessary, if not solely sufficient, input for economic growth. Mark Blaug commented that ‘‘if literacy teaching in the underdeveloped world becomes truly ‘functional’ in the new UNESCO sense, its development value is very likely to be greater than that of primary education’’ (1966, p. 415).1 In a review of evidence produced for UNESCO, Mary Jean Bowman and Arnold Anderson concluded that ‘‘literacy of something like 90 to 95 per cent is necessary to realize incomes over $500, barring exceptional circumstances. A complex industrial society depends upon many kinds of masscommunication media, and without near universal literacy these channels can function only imperfectly’’ (Bowman and Anderson 1968, p. 117).
Adult literacy progress? What has been the measured progress in adult literacy, at least as literacy was understood during the 1960s? In brief, while literacy rates increased sharply during the 1960s and 1970s, progress towards the elimination of adult illiteracy proved elusive over the years since the World Conference on Education for All (EFA) in Jomtien (1990) and the World Education Forum in Dakar (2000). As the 2015 EFA Global Monitoring Report (UNESCO 2015) shows, only a few countries with comparable data have succeeded in reducing adult illiteracy by 50 per cent since 2000 (this was EFA’s fourth goal). Equally worrisome is the fact that an examination of national education plans by the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP 2015) showed that scant attention had been paid to adult literacy in national plans, at least as compared to other EFA goals. Literacy
1
‘‘The notion of functional literacy became a linchpin of UNESCO’s Experimental World Literacy Programme (EWLP), initiated at the General Conference in 1966, implemented in eleven countries and discontinued in 1973. The EWLP, funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and other agencies, aimed to provide literacy acquisition via experimentation and work-oriented learning’’ (UNESCO 2006, p. 153).
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seems to be slipping down the world agenda for change (Wagner 2011). The 2nd Global Report on Adult Learning and Education: Rethinking Literacy (GRALE II, UIL 2013) offered a comprehensive account of national literacy policies and progress, collected through surveys and interviews with ministries. GRALE II concluded that disadvantaged groups had largely been left behind. Even using 1990 as a reference point, and not 2000, estimates by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) show there has been a far smaller reduction in adult illiteracy than was hoped in low-income countries with comparable indicators of adult literacy (UIS 2013). Progress is more uncertain still when considering estimates which are based on direct measures of adult literacy (rather than self-reports, as in most UIS estimations). Since 2000, in many countries interviewers conducting demographic and health surveys have tested literacy by showing women a card with a sentence and then reporting whether or not the interviewee could read it.2 If we focus on women aged 20–34 in each survey year (that is, women from different birth cohorts in each survey), then there would appear to be steady increases over time in the literacy rates. However, Bilal Barakat (2015, 2016) compared literacy rates in several African countries and in Nepal over the life course of a single cohort of women aged 20–34 during the first survey wave who were older in later survey years. He found a very different picture. Across cohorts more surveyed women over time could correctly read a sentence. But this appears to be simply because more girls are finishing primary school as opposed to more adults learning to read. This is to say that, in most countries, literacy within the birth cohort stagnated or even declined over time (see Figure 1 for examples). Given that facility in reading can be lost, despite having been learned once, this trend is not too surprising. The environments of these women may not have been conducive to keeping up the practice of literacy. Further analysis shows that the declines seen in Figure 1 cannot be attributed to the emigration of literates, or to differential mortality due to HIV/ AIDS between more literate and less literate populations. Only in Nepal is there evidence of substantial gains five and ten years later in the literacy rate for women who were aged 20–34 in 2001.
New Literacy Studies and human-rights orientations The stalled progress of literacy programmes has been accompanied (though certainly not caused) by two newer conceptual developments, one stressing the varied contextual meanings and purposes of literacy, and the other viewing all educational change through a lens of human rights rather than as a factor of economic production. First, especially following the publication of Harvey Graff’s critique, The Literacy Myth (Graff 1979), a wave of ‘‘New Literacy’’ studies (NLS) has shifted the focus of interest from the outcomes to the environment associated with literacy. In 1981, Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole published their study of the Vai people of western Liberia, some of whom were literate in the Vai language but 2
If the woman being interviewed has completed primary school, she is presumed literate and not shown a card.
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Figure 1 Literacy of women aged 20–34 in 2000, in base year and in various follow-up years. Source: Barakat 2015
had not acquired this literacy through formal schooling. Scribner and Cole found no predictable psychological consequences of literacy per se, but only particular consequences of particular literacies. Literacy in itself was not found to have important effects on development; what mattered were the uses the Vai made of their literacy. A retrospective view of the shift in thinking was offered by Graff, who emphasised that ‘‘literacy is not an independent variable, as in the myth. It is instead historically founded and grounded, a product of the histories in which it is entangled and interwoven, and which give literacy its meanings’’ (Graff 2010, p. 645).3 Most researchers subsequently began to see literacy not as a single phenomenon with universal economic and political ‘‘effects’’. Lesley Bartlett concluded that literacy is more like a verb than a noun: literacy is an action taken by actors. Different actors, who are differently placed in various social, cultural, political, 3
In the same retrospective, Graff also called UNESCO ‘‘one of the last bastions of the unqualified literacy myth’’ (Graff 2010, p. 651).
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economic and historical contexts, each have different purposes for reading and writing different types of texts (Bartlett 2008, p. 751). Accordingly, researchers began asking how people tend to use their literacy, and what meaning it has in their daily lives. What are the implications of literacy for interpersonal relationships, and for larger structures and power relations? Literacy increasingly came to be seen by researchers as plural, taking different shapes in different contexts, and as a continuum of competencies used for communication (Street 2003; Prins 2010). This approach made particular sense where the rationale for promoting literacy was as a human right rather than merely as a necessary precondition for sustainable development. From this perspective, ethnographic researchers sought to learn how individual people used literacy to enrich their lives in ways that they themselves define (e.g. Maddox 2007). Who uses literacy to claim and exercise freedom from violence or a right to housing? Apart from small-scale ethnographies, until very recently there was little cross-national evidence available to assess the noneconomic social consequences and the answers to such questions. A second shift in thinking about educational progress since the 1960s has been an increased emphasis on education as a human right. Literacy and schooling became seen, at least in part, as ends in themselves rather than as a means for development. The success of the Moscow Helsinki Group and the US-based Helsinki Watch (devoted to monitoring implementation of the Helsinki Accords (OSCE 1975) throughout the Soviet bloc) at the end of the Cold War may have inspired the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, UN 1989). The widespread ratification of the CRC might in turn explain the confidence of Education for All proponents in 1990, when adopting a human rights approach (while downplaying the expectations and research agenda of the 1960s). Investigations of the benefits of education became seen as less urgent than during the Development Decade because education was itself the benefit and, as mentioned previously, there were few sources of information about the large-scale consequences of education apart from rate-of-return analysis. Because adults with insufficient literacy are disadvantaged and excluded in social, political and economic spheres, many advocates since the 1970s have regarded a minimum level of literacy as a human right (Oxenham 2008, p. 24). The relationship between education and human rights was made explicit in Jomtien in 1990 (UNESCO 1990), when the Education For All movement referenced and reaffirmed the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which asserted that ‘‘everyone has a right to education’’ (UN 1948, Art 26) In Jomtien, human rights were considered ‘‘the foundation of our determination, singly and together, to ensure education for all’’ (UNESCO 1990, after Art 10). Then, in Dakar in 2000, representatives of civil society, national ministries and international organisations again referenced the 1948 Declaration as well as the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (WEF 2000). From a rights perspective, it makes no difference whether or not eradicating illiteracy would yield economic growth (as assumed during the UN Development Decade). Thus, during the quarter century since advocates embraced EFA (with its specific goal of halving adult illiteracy by 2015), it became widely accepted that universal literacy was itself a goal. Literacy became concomitantly less important to investigate as a means towards any end. Assessments of its impact – either critical
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or supportive – are superfluous for globally declared rights.4 And the New Literacy researchers would, in any case, cast a sceptical eye on evaluations of impact.
Views of benefits Notwithstanding the conceptual shifts evident in research associated with New Literacy Studies and the human-rights-based views of literacy, and in sharp contrast with the Jomtien and Dakar EFA meetings, last year’s Incheon Declaration (WEF 2015) shifted its emphasis to what was termed a ‘‘a new vision for education’’. Country representatives meeting in the Republic of Korea stated: ‘‘Our vision is to transform lives through education, recognizing the important role of education as a main driver of development’’ (ibid., p. 6). The Incheon Declaration thus returned the agenda of education to its future social consequences, reaching beyond the outcomes for individuals seen in ethnographic studies. Comprehensive reviews of some of the changes associated with literacy had already been provided by the 2006 Education for All Global Monitoring Report (UNESCO 2006). However, surprisingly few studies have attempted to estimate the discrete benefits of adult literacy, net of the effects of adult school attainment, perhaps because time-series information is scarce. Those which do estimate these literacy effects have reported benefits for children and adults. In the case of India, Amita Chudgar (2009) found that, after controlling for other co-variates, increasing parental literacy independently increased the probability that children would enrol in and complete primary education. Not only was the fact of having literate parents found to have effects on enrolment, but there were also effects due to living in a village which was more literate than other villages. Paul Glewwe (1999) showed that mothers’ literacy had a significant effect on children’s health, above and beyond the mothers’ school attainment. A further update and analysis of British panel data by Paul Dolan et al. (2012) reveals that adult education programmes, both formal and informal, yielded important general benefits in terms of physical and mental health. Analysis of the findings of the OECD’s PIAAC survey in the United States also revealed that literacy had independent associations with self-reported health, even controlling for educational attainment and family background (Prins et al. 2015).5 Kristine Sørensen and her colleagues (2012) summarised available research on how literacy contributes to healthy behaviours and healthful choices. From the 4
There are moral arguments against the human rights approach in global governance. British philosopher Onora O’Neill (2005) echoes Edmund Burke’s sceptical view of the French Revolution’s assertion of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (Burke 1790; Paine 1791). O’Neil questions the sense of embracing abstract rights without identifying any corollary bearer of the duty to provide or protect those rights. If human rights and obligations are corollary normative claims, then there can be no universal rights without a counterpart obligation by a universal guarantor of those rights. What body would serve as the guarantor for universal literacy? Using the language of rights to promote education, not only for primary schooling but also for lifelong learning, makes little sense without strong states willing to guarantee adult literacy. As already noted, despite twenty-five years of rights-based rationales through EFA, universalisation of adult literacy has not been achieved. Invoking literacy as a universal human right does not guarantee success.
5
The impact of adult learning and education on health and well-being is also one of the topics which the 3rd Global Report on Adult Learning and Education focuses on (UIL 2016).
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published literature, there appear to be four dimensions of health literacy which can be applied to three health domains. Literacy benefits not only individuals, but also their families and children. A cross-national study carried out in Nepal, Venezuela, Mexico and Zambia showed that maternal literacy is the channel through which mothers improve their children’s health outcomes. Mothers who comprehend more difficult expository health-related texts, and who recognise more nouns, are better able to comprehend public health messages in broadcast media as well as print. They also articulate a more organised health narrative which is easier for health practitioners to follow. These effects of literacy are additional and are found after controlling for mothers’ schooling attainment as well as socio-economic level. More literate mothers also adopt a pedagogical stance with their children, talking to them more frequently during their school years (Levine et al. 2012). Beyond demographics, Ralf St. Clair offers a theoretical overview of the broader possible impacts of literacy conceived as a capability to affect not only economic outcomes but also social, political, psychological, health and family outcomes (St. Clair 2010, p. 37). From this perspective, literacy is a capability for change ‘‘by applying appropriate skills in a specific situation of engagement with texts … Where there is a capability, the person is able to do what they want to do whether at home, in the workplace, in a social or political context, or as a support for further learning’’ (ibid. p. 35). In the section below, new sources of information are used to illustrate the kinds of research questions literacy researchers can now address. Some preliminary answers are also tentatively offered.
Cross-national surveys available for a revitalised literacy agenda The SDGs arrive at the right time for research. Today’s researchers have access to high-quality secondary data gathered by several complementary projects, far beyond the resources available during the first ‘‘Development Decade’’. Four types of information are mentioned below as illustrations of what can be investigated by those wishing to know the possible consequences of literacy. As one illustration of the possibilities for SDG research on literacy, cross-national survey data suggest that literacy is closely related to subjective well-being and pluralist worldviews (causation is impossible to establish). From 2010 to 2014, a consortium of social researchers designed and conducted the sixth wave of the World Values Survey (WVS 2014). From these most recent surveys I have selected nine countries with stubbornly low rates of literacy. In these countries, survey respondents who reported themselves as ‘‘literate’’ were much more likely to claim that they were in ‘‘good’’ or in ‘‘excellent’’ health, as compared with those who said they were illiterate (see Figure 2). This analysis is limited to persons aged 18–40, since older adults are likely to be more prone to health problems regardless of their level of literacy. Beyond personal health, there are a several key orientations which are at least associated with, if not actually caused by literacy, and which are relevant for the attainment of the SDGs. The World Values Survey data show that literate individuals who interact in literate environments typically place trust in a wider circle of people than do people who report themselves to be illiterate (WVS 2014).
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Literate
Illiterate
Tunisia
60%
Pakistan
70% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10%
Yemen
S. Africa
Nigeria
Morocco
Iraq
Egypt
Algeria
0%
Figure 2 Literacy and self-assessed health: adults in low-literacy countries who described their health as ‘‘very good’’ or ‘‘excellent’’. Source: Analysis of data from sixth-wave countries of the World Values Survey (WVS 2014) for adults aged 40 or younger. Literacy is self-reported
Respondents were asked the degree to which they trusted others, including others in their own neighbourhood, others of a different religion, and others of a different nationality. In countries with low levels of literacy, it is possible to find modest but clear and statistically significant differences in the degree of trust between those who were declared to be literate as opposed to illiterate. Beyond trusting one’s own neighbourhood, respondents who were literate were more often trusting of people of different religions and of different nationalities (see Table 1). The same cross-national survey includes a question which is critically important for the SDGs, namely asking the respondent to prioritise either economic growth/job creation or protection of the environment. V81. Here are two statements people sometimes make when discussing the environment and economic growth. Which of them comes closer to your own point of view? 1. 2.
‘‘Protecting the environment should be given priority, even if it causes slower economic growth and some loss of jobs.’’ ‘‘Economic growth and creating jobs should be the top priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent.’’
Responses from the WVS indicate that those who are literate are more likely to prioritise the environment over economic growth. By contrast, respondents who do not report they are literate are much more likely to favour economic growth over environmental protection (see Table 2). The advantage of the WVS is that it included many low-literacy countries. However, its measure of literacy is rudimentary because it is based on selfreporting. A more nuanced indicator of adult literacy is currently contained in PIAAC Round 1, which was conducted from 2008 to 2013 in 24 countries surveying around 166,000 adults aged 16–65 (OECD 2013a, 2013b).6 6
Round 1 included 22 OECD member countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium (Flanders), Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, the
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Table 1 Literacy, tolerance and trust Proportions of respondents in low-literacy countries who said that they ‘‘completely trust’’ or ‘‘somewhat trust’’: People in their own neighbourhood
People of another religion
People of a different nationality
Literate
Illiterate
Literate
Illiterate
Literate
Illiterate
Algeria
0.59
0.67
0.15
0.14
0.18
0.16
Egypt
0.89
0.92
0.41
0.35
0.15
0.12
Iraq
0.89
0.90
0.35
0.26
0.25
0.15
Morocco
0.73
0.80
0.27
0.21
0.27
0.17
Nigeria
0.72
0.71
0.45
0.42
0.33
0.31
Pakistan
0.81
0.75
0.28
0.22
0.20
0.14
South Africa
0.74
0.69
0.57
0.53
0.49
0.44
Tunisia
0.75
0.81
0.11
0.09
0.12
0.10
Yemen
0.90
0.83
0.14
0.08
0.21
0.12
Source: Analysis of countries from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey (WVS 2014). Literacy is self-reported
Table 2 World Values Survey on Environmental Protection versus Economic Growth Literate
Not literate
Total
n
%
n
%
n
%
‘‘Protecting the environment’’ (statement 1.)
17,884
49.44%
625
38.06%
18,509
48.94%
‘‘Economic growth and creating jobs’’ (statement 2.)
15,916
44.00%
921
56.09%
16,837
44.52%
No answer
263
0.73%
12
0.73%
275
0.73%
Don’t know
758
2.10%
30
1.83%
788
2.08%
Other answers Total
1,338
3.70%
54
3.29%
1,392
3.68%
36,175
100%
1,642
100%
37,817
100%
Source: Analysis of data of countries from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey (WVS 2014). Literacy is self-reported
Footnote 6 continued Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom (England and Northern Ireland), and the United States – and 2 partner countries: Cyprus and the Russian Federation. Round 2 (2012–2016) surveyed 6 OECD member countries: Chile, Greece, Israel, New Zealand, Slovenia and Turkey – and 3 OECD partner countries: Indonesia, Lithuania and Singapore. The report for Round 2 was published in June of this year (OECD 2016). Round 3 is scheduled for 2014–2018, surveying Ecuador, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Peru and the United States. For more on the literacy and numeracy aspect of the Survey of Adult Skills, see Windisch 2016.
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PIAAC was designed to build on two previous studies: the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) from the 1990s (OECD and Statistics Canada 1995; OECD and HRDC 1997)7; and the 10-country Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALL) Survey (2003–2006; Statistics Canada and OECD 2005, 2011). PIAAC used five scaled levels and scores which are comparable across countries and languages of administration. Representative national samples of persons aged 16–65 were interviewed. Answers could be given by computer or via pencil-and-paper. PIAAC assessed not only literacy, but also numeracy skills and the ability to solve problems in technology-rich environments. Among other resources offered by PIAAC, there are responses to questions on civic engagement and political attitudes which are directly relevant to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the role of literacy. Similar to the patterns which emerged from the WVS (see Table 2), PIAAC shows that individuals’ literacy levels (as well as educational attainment) are associated with such possible social consequences as political efficacy and civic engagement (OECD 2013a). For most OECD countries, the survey showed that greater literacy skills levels (above and beyond more education) have independent positive effects on such outcomes as adults’ willingness to engage in the political process, political efficacy, trust and good health. Furthermore, the PIAAC data revealed that a negative effect also applies: a literacy level of 1 (the lowest level) as compared to 4 or 5 (the highest levels) is associated with negative effects in relation to four risk factors: low trust; low civic engagement; low political efficacy; and ‘‘fair’’ or ‘‘poor’’ health. The odds ratios for these four risk factors are presented in Figure 3. Note that these are considered effects by the OECD and not simply correlates, since they take into account years of education and other demographic factors which would be expected to relate to these outcomes. In addition to WVS and PIAAC, there is a third newly available source of information for cross-national investigations into the benefits of literacy. Through its Skills Toward Employment and Productivity (STEP) study, the World Bank is drawing samples of households and enterprises in several key countries for literacy research (World Bank 2014). STEP’s sample households focused on persons aged 15–64, usually in urban areas. STEP borrowed items from PIAAC’s literacy test to assess proficiency and to create a scale which is comparable with the one used by PIAAC (although because only urban adults were sampled in most countries, the national levels are not comparable with PIAAC). STEP sought to measure three different types of skills: reading proficiency, maths and computer use. The household survey also collected information on languages spoken, both currently and as a mother tongue. STEP also questioned the respondents’ socio-economic status as a child, current resources, family size, and early childhood development. For a broad assessment of the benefits of literacy, STEP offers researchers an opportunity to examine the impact of reading proficiency on social adjustment, openness to new experience, confidence, and sense of security. James Heckman and Tim Kautz (2012) showed that these socio-emotional skills are not immutable but 7
The International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) was conducted in three phases (in 1994, 1996 and 1998) in 20 nations.
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Figure 3 Four detrimental social consequences associated with low literacy levels in OECD countries. Source: OECD 2013a. Odds ratios show the effects on four risks of scoring at a low literacy level, as compared to scoring at a high literacy level, net of other known contributing factors. Logistic regression analysis of PIAAC data controls for the effects of age, gender, educational attainment and immigrant and language background. Thus the effects shown here are not reflections only of completed schooling but are net of this and other factors. Income is not controlled for, however. In each country, at least one of the four effects is statistically significant
can be learned as a result of positive school experiences and, one would assume, through literacy. These outcomes are just as important as cognitive skills for achievement of the SDGs. The new interest in soft skills builds on cross-cultural psychologists who studied ‘‘modernity’’ during the 1960s (Inkeles and Smith 1974, pp. 19, 154). One of STEP’s innovations was to develop a cross-culturally valid set of indicators for non-cognitive socio-emotional skills which affect other outcomes. After extensive pilot-testing, the survey included a self-report of personality traits and behaviour. For example, three questions with four possible responses each were used to construct an indicator of ‘‘openness to new experience.’’ New evidence for the impact of literacy is available for Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Ghana and Colombia, among other countries participating in the STEP Programme. There is a close relationship between the amount of text respondents report reading (either at work or away from work) and their responses to three key questions measuring ‘‘openness’’. For example, Vietnamese adults who read more frequently are also more likely to tell interviewers that they come up with ideas others haven’t thought of before (see Figure 4), and also that they enjoy learning new things. What is even more relevant to the literacy agenda in the SDGs is that adults who scored more highly on the STEP literacy assessment were also more ‘‘open’’ as indicated by their responses to these questions (see Figure 5). The relation between literacy and indicators of ‘‘openness’’ can be explored in a variety of settings. Using the STEP questions, it is possible to develop an overall openness scale by aggregating the responses to these items. This scale shows the power of literacy. In countries as distinctive as Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Ghana, there
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Percentages of respondents
70 60 50
763
almost always e some e almost never
40 30 20 10 0 no reading
low
medium
high
amount of reading in and out of work Figure 4 Answers by Vietnamese adults to the question ‘‘Do you come up with ideas other people haven’t thought of before? Source: Analysis of STEP data provided by World Bank (2014)
are similarities among those who responded positively to the three openness questions (shown in Figure 6). Also, in each country, even after controlling for the effects of age, gender, urban/rural location, and school attainment, respondents who read more frequently have higher ‘‘openness’’ scores.
Mobile reading and ‘‘M-learning’’ The consequences of media change for the production and study of literacy have seldom been acknowledged in norm-setting projects. Whereas the Jomtien Declaration (UNESCO 1990) made no mention of ‘‘computer’’ or ‘‘Internet’’, these words did appear in the 2000 EFA Framework – but only twice in a 78-page document, and only in relation to what schools should do to promote equitable learning. Since Dakar, the mass circulation of printed material has been declining to such a degree that the UNESCO Institute for Statistics halted the collection of newspaper circulation information over ten years ago. And yet the Incheon Declaration (WEF 2015) makes no mention of electronic media. Researchers now can pose the question of how the decline in newspapers and the rise of mobile phone literacy have affected the attitudes and engagement needed to achieve the SDGs. It is especially important to uncover the impact of changing media on the values and aims of Target 4.7. The evolving and broadening meaning of ‘‘literacy’’ since the UN Development Decade is part of a longer-term evolution. As early as the 19th century, pessimists feared that books would become obsolete, but optimists envisioned a time where knowledge would be equally available to all and expensive books would be superfluous.8 Could there be new benefits to newer forms of literacy? In addition to 8
In 1893, the great French bibliophile Louis Octave Uzanne witnessed a demonstration of the kinetograph – forerunner of a movie camera. The next year he published his dystopic tale, ‘‘The End of Books’’ (Uzanne 1894). Uzanne warned that electronic media would soon replace books. Today, literacy researchers are uncovering both positive as well as negative consequences of fewer print reading materials and more mobile reading.
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Figure 5 Reading scores of Vietnamese adults, by answers to three questions measuring ‘‘openness’’. Source: Analysis of STEP data provided by World Bank (2014)
Figure 6 Openness, school attainment and use of literacy. Source: Analysis of STEP data provided by World Bank (2014). Note that the Sri Lankan sample is for rural as well as urban adults, while the Vietnamese and Ghanaian samples are limited to urban areas. Conditional means of openness are based on the sums of answers to the three questions listed in Figure 5. Regressions also control for age, gender, self-reported socio-economic status as a child and (in Sri Lanka) whether urban or rural
the previously discussed cross-national quantitative survey data which can be related to the SDGs, there is a small but growing body of evidence on mobile learning (‘‘M-learning’’) and on electronic literacy. Researchers can now use the experience of mobile reading to investigate consequences relevant to the SDGs. Already researchers have found that mobile reading can support the acquisition of school-based knowledge. Mobile phone activities and learning exercises, when added to an adult education programme in Niger, improved reading and numeracy
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outcomes significantly more than among similar students in programmes without mobile phone exercises (Aker et al. 2012). Future researchers can now ask what is the impact of mobile reading for those who are not in school. In 1787 the United States’ ambassador to France, and author of the US Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, wrote that if it ‘‘were […] left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them’’ (Jefferson 1905 [1787]). Today, newspapers as traditionally understood are disappearing in many countries. At the same time, mobile phone use is growing. It is estimated that more people in the world today have access to a phone than have access to a nearby toilet. Mobile phones have the potential not only to alter the amount of reading (potentially increased), but also the type of reading which takes place. By definition, mobile reading is less likely to be national in origin and more likely to be global. What effect will global sources and authors then have on national citizenship? One possibility is that mobile reading will further erode the demand for paper sources. Not only are newspapers becoming scarce in many countries, the same applies to books and libraries. However, a second possibility is that mobile reading will actually promote traditional newspapers. Just as printed books preserved the texts of older oral ballads, mobile technology may create greater engagement with printed newspapers. Newspapers and the Internet sometimes thrive in symbiotic relationships. For example, The Namibian is an independent newspaper with a popular web edition. In 2007 The Namibian launched the ‘‘SMS pages’’ as a way for readers to respond to specific articles by short text messaging (SMS). The editors placed images of a mobile phone beneath certain stories in the paper and invited readers to text in their responses. This feature became so popular that the paper now dedicates pages of the print edition, and a section of the website, to the SMS responses (Heatwole 2010). Mobile phones are also being used to complain about bribes, to lobby for political change, and to make transparent the actions of tyrannical regimes (Rotberg and Aker 2013). In any event, the use of mobile devices has surged in recent years. Could mobile devices change the literacy environment in the same way that printing did in the past? Already there is widespread use of mobile devices in sub-Saharan Africa for banking, bill paying, social communication and participation in democratic practices by engaging with political leaders through the use of SMS (Asino et al. 2011). UNESCO has surveyed the habits, preferences and attitudes of 4,000 mobile readers in seven countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan and Zimbabwe), and conducted additional in-depth interviews with a sub-sample of respondents (West and Chew 2014). From tracking the usage of World Reader Mobile (WRM) books,9 UNESCO discovered that the majority of readers are male but the most active and intensive readers are female. On average, women spent 9
Worldreader Mobile (WRM) is a mobile application launched in 2012 by Worldreader, a non-profit organisation.
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207 min per month reading on their mobile phones during the three-month period of the study, as compared with 33 min per month for men, and women also read more frequently each month. The majority of respondents reported that they enjoyed reading even more after they started reading on their mobile phones, regardless of their initial attitudes towards reading. Of the respondents who reported to have disliked reading, roughly two-thirds reported that they liked reading more after using their mobile phones to do so. The study concluded that people who do not like to read in general may eventually begin to enjoy reading more after they start reading on their mobile phone. We may now ask questions about the impact of M-learning on the SDGs. How will this reading affect adults’ abilities to learn about environmental protection? How will it change readers’ regard for themselves as global citizens?
Directions for future research on the SDGs and the benefits of literacy Researchers should welcome the new vision on the consequences of literacy implicit in the SDGs. Today there is more publicly available information than ever before to investigate the impact of adult literacy.10 The SDGs can refocus research attention on the consequences of education, as in Goal 4, including the consequences of literacy. Because adult literacy was relatively neglected among the EFA goals, it is important to uncover ways in which it benefits both individuals and their societies. Following the 1960–1970 Development Decade, considerable attention was paid to the economic impact of literacy as part of basic education. But there are non-market benefits of literacy which remain to be fully understood. Although recent literacy researchers have revealed the barriers to literacy, highlighted the environments needed for literacy (Easton 2014), and discussed the varied meanings people give to their communication (Maddox 2008; Bartlett 2008; Prins 2010; Esposito et al. 2015), fewer investigations have been made in recent years into the social consequences of literacy, and its benefit for sustainable development. The Dakar Framework for Action argued that ‘‘the vital role literacy plays in lifelong learning, sustainable livelihoods, good health, active citizenship and the improved quality of life for individuals, communities and societies must be more widely recognized’’ (WEF 2000, p. 16). And yet, rather than becoming more widely recognised, fifteen years on, adult literacy became relatively neglected among the EFA goals. Within the new Sustainable Development Goals, the aims of education (SDG 4) are linked to outcomes rather than rights-based ends-in-themselves. In this article I have argued that the prospects for innovative research into the benefits of literacy are excellent. A renewed focus on sustainable development after 2015 has the potential to re-energise investigation of the social and economic consequences of different forms of education for youth and adults, including the consequences of literacy. 10
One important source of information which is not yet publically available are further country results of UNESCO’s Literacy Assessment and Monitoring Programme (LAMP), which measured literacy in several countries during the decade after Dakar. It is hoped that data from those assessments will also become available for researchers in the near future.
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Acknowledgement The author is grateful for comments from his former colleagues at the UNESCO Global Education Monitor, as well as to the anonymous reviewers. Useful suggestions came from Bilal Barakat, Esther Prins, Alexandria Valerio, Maya Kiesselbach and Stephen Roche.
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The author David Post is Professor of Education at Pennsylvania State University. His teaching and research interests include stratification, child labour, and national identity as these are affected by public education policies.
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