This book, a handbook from Oxfam Great Britain (GB) for adult literacy practitioners and a review of the state of literacy education for researchers and policy makers, is designed to help the reader:

• identify needs and appropriate ways to offer learning activities in communities;
• plan for the recruitment and training of adult literacy teachers;
• develop curriculum and teaching materials;
• make decisions about how to assess learning and evaluate programmes.

The authors discuss international trends in literacy. They state that there is a  tension in trying to assess the outcomes of financial investment in literacy programmes to determine what is both effective and cost effective. Describing best practices, they claim, is not simple because programmes, structures, and evaluations are often not comparable. This has led to greater emphasis on measuring levels of attainment and certification, and on the accreditation of training, in a general move towards the professionalisation and institutionalisation of adult literacy. Programmes are more frequently being grounded "in the reality of their social and cultural contexts and focused on the literacy and numeracy required by individuals in their community. The tools of ethnography and participatory rural appraisal (PRA; see Chapter 8) are being used to identify the social, political, cultural, and economic situation of the community in which the programme will operate, to ensure that the programme is relevant." Innovations include examples like the ActionAid REFLECT programme in which the programme is created by local educators in the local context and Yo Si Puedo, a Cuban programme viewed through broadcast media and video. "Another trend is greater consideration of combining literacy with other adult training. Women’s income-generation programmes have done this for a number of years but greater thought is now being given to how to include literacy and numeracy in a range of different areas at both basic and more advanced levels." Innovation in the use of information and communication technology (ICT) includes training of literacy educators to use ICT in their classes, technology that can be accessed in rural areas through caravans of mobile classrooms, and various introductory and open school efforts to teach both literacy and numeracy.

The book recommends that programmes include a gender perspective and theoretical framework in designing and implementing a literacy programme and provides a chart that summarises policy approaches to gender, as well as principles for programme implementation using gender mainstreaming. Literacy, as indicated by the authors, is taken to include the wide range of communications, problem-solving, and interpersonal and lifelong-learning skills that people use in their daily lives. Four broad responses to the question 'what is literacy?' include:

1. "Literacy means the ability - or the skills - to read and write (often called the competency approach).
2. Literacy means engaging in tasks that require the written word and are considered essential for life and work (often called the functional approach).
3. Literacy means a set of social and cultural practices linked by the use of the written word (often called the social practices approach).
4. Literacy means a tool for critical reflection and action for social change (often called the radical approach)."

The authors review these four positions and what criticism of them has been offered, and then state their thinking regarding each position, frequently citing implications for planners, often based upon evidence from practicing programmes that have evaluated their work. For example, they describe critical reflection: "taking a ‘critical reflection’ approach to literacy means being responsive to individual and community needs. It means encouraging learners to look beyond ‘reading the word’ to ‘reading the world’, as Freire [Brazilian educational theorist Paolo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed] put it. It supports learners to become actors in developing their own communities and societies." In the development context, an example is that students can produce texts, known as learner-generated materials (LGMs), sometimes beginning with PRA mapping techniques or pictorial storytelling that supports learners in generating their own early writing.

The document continues from the theoretical to policy and framework development, practical assessments of situation and scale, debates on the language appropriate for initial literacy learning (mother tongue or language of power), monitoring and evaluation beginning within the planning process, paedagogical aspects of how people learn to read and write, the devising of a curriculum, the choice of purchasing or producing resources, the preparation and training of educators, and the assessment of learning.

Contents include the following:

Foreword

PART 1 - Understanding the Context:

1. Introduction
2. The international context
3. Mainstreaming gender

PART 2 - Understanding Literacy:

1. What do we mean by literacy?
2. Literacy as skills
3. Literacy as tasks
4. Literacy as social practice
5. Literacy as critical reflection 

PART 3 - Understanding the Preparation Process:

1. Planning for literacy
2. The language of literacy
3. Monitoring and evaluating literacy programmes

PART 4 - Understanding the Learning Process:

1. How people learn to read and write
2. Approaches to curriculum
3. Resources for literacy training and supporting literacy educators
4. Assessing literacy learning

PART 5 - Making Sense of Adult Literacy

Conclusions

References

Index

The Oxfam UK Publications website accessed on July 23 2009.