What do you mean by adult literacy and numeracy?

Adult Literacy and Numeracy (ALN) Curriculum for Scotlandprinciples

Part One: Principles

2. What do you mean by adult literacy and numeracy?

The ability to read, write and use numbers, to handle information, express ideas and opinions, make decisions and solve problems, as family members, workers, citizens and lifelong learners (Link opens in new windowALNIS, 2001).

The definition tells us that:

  • To be literate and numerate is not only to have the mechanical skills of encoding and decoding symbols but also the knowledge, skills and understanding that enable us to do what we want to do in our private, family, community and working lives.
  • The key life areasand social contexts in which literacy and numeracy are used are important in deciding on what is to be learned.
  • Literacy and numeracy skills are almost always employed for a purpose - such as making decisions or solving problems - and in a particular social context. The use of literacy and numeracy in everyday life is closely linked with social practices that have their own social purpose and meaning. The incidental learning that happens in such contexts is as important as planned and deliberate learning within the learning programme. It is important that learners not only develop skills in a particular context but also become proficient in other contexts in order to broaden and transfer their learning.

We are using a social practices account of adult literacy and numeracy (Barton, 2002). Rather than seeing literacy and numeracy as the decontextualised, mechanical manipulation of letters, words and figures this view shows that literacy and numeracy are located within social, emotional and linguistic contexts. Many literacy and numeracy events in life are regular, repeated activities, such as paying bills, sending greetings cards or reading bed-time stories and some events are linked into routine sequences that are part of the formal procedures and expectations of social institutions such as work-places, schools and welfare agencies. The more informal expectations and pressures of the home or peer group structure other events where there are expectations about the right way to do things (Lave and Wenger, 1991). For example, the practices associated with cooking are quite different in the home and in the work place - supported, learned and carried out in different ways. The division of labour is different in institutional kitchens - the scale of the operations, the clothing people wear when cooking, the health and safety precautions they are required to take, and so on. Literacy and numeracy practices integrate the routines, skills and understandings that are organised within specific contexts and also the feelings and values that people have about these activities. If you are worried that you can?t do something then you are going to find it more difficult in a public or workplace context than if you are at home in a relaxed situation.

Reading and writing are complex cognitive activities that also depend on a great deal of contextual (ie social) knowledge and intention. For example, someone reading the main news story in a newspaper is not just decoding words but also using knowledge of the conventions of newspaper writing, of the local/national focus and the political and philosophical orientation of the newspaper. In fact they are "reading between the lines" (Bransfield et al, 1999). In the same way, adults in a supermarket are not just using number skills when making price comparisons but also taking into account their prior experience with brands, family likes and dislikes and perhaps ethical concerns (eg organic, GM-free, not made with child labour or Fair Trade).

Literacy and numeracy learning takes place in particular social contexts (Wenger, 1998) and so it is important to understand the nature of people?s informal learning strategies. People have insights into how they learn, have theories about literacy, numeracy and education and use particular strategies to learn new literacies. This understanding of literacy and numeracy is a key aspect of people?s learning, and their theories, even if they are not very explicit, guide what they do (Gillespie, 2002c).