Education Commons^™

Physical To Cyber: A Case Study Of The Print And Digital Literacy Of Burgeoning Older Adult Learners, Laura Elizabeth Williams

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This intrinsic single case study explored the ways in which two older adult burgeoning literacy learners in a capital city in the U.S. Gulf South utilized the skills of print literacy and digital literacy both together and apart. This study was an investigation of print and digital literacy, individually and combined, in order to examine the way older adult burgeoning literacy learners used one kind of literacy (print) to develop the other (digital). Using semi-structured interviews, observations, and literacy journals, participants’ perceptions were explored. Findings included that fully literate older adults used their literacy to enact and maintain social connections, …

Vocabulary & Academic Success In University Undergraduate Students, Sandra Irvin, Kathryn Guillot Blankenship

Teaching and Learning in Communication Sciences & Disorders

Thirty- nine students at a four-year university participated in this two-part study. One part investigated the relationship between maternal education and vocabulary while also looking at the relationship between vocabulary and academic success. The second portion looked at the relationship between vocabulary and word learning. Results from the study indicate that vocabulary knowledge is significantly correlated with GPA and students’ ability to learn words in a limited amount of time. Students with higher vocabulary scores earned higher gain scores and GPA. Maternal education was not significantly correlated with PPVT scores, contrary to what prior literature would suggest.

Examining The Underlying Structure Of Adult Literacy Practices At Home And Work, Melissa R. Killian, George Chitiyo, Nancy J. Kolodziej Ph.D., Ashley Akenson

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

Adults have similar literacy habits as children, such as reading to gain knowledge or for enjoyment. However, when workplace literacy skills are considered, these practices are not always book related and usually involve informal communication such as collaboration between workers. This study used data from the 2012 Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies to examine adults’ literacy skills. A total of 39 adult literacy skills were examined to explore patterns among them, effectively reducing them to nine interpretable factors. Each factor focused on an area of literacy skills, such as work-related reading, educating others, and writing. The nine …

The Vernacular Literacy Practices Of A Newly Literate Moroccan Woman: An Ethnographic Perspective, Reddad Erguig

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

This paper offers a discussion of the literacy practices of a newly literate Moroccan woman. I draw on the social practice theory of literacy and I use ethnographic methods to explore the participant’s life history and offer an account of her family-related literacy practices within the framework of gender studies. In-depth interviews, informal discussion, participant observation, visual ethnography, and documentary photography were employed to collect data over one year. Literacy events were used as the basic unit of analysis and patterns were identified through coding and theme analysis. The findings indicate that the family is a strong impetus for the …

Not Just For The Kids: Adult Skills In The 21st Century, Juliette Mendelovits, Dave Tout

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

The Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is an international survey of adult skills that covers reading literacy, numeracy and problem-solving of 16-to-65-year-old adults. This paper focuses on the development and evolution of the reading and numeracy aspects of PIAAC and presents an overview of Australian performance in PIAAC, the social and economic outcomes associated with literacy and numeracy proficiency and the literacy and numeracy standards for graduating teachers.

Bullied, Hawked, And Scrutinized: Adult Literacy Practitioners’ Affective Reactions To State And Institutional Power, Amy Pickard

Adult Education Research Conference

This study explores adult literacy practitioners’ affective responses to contemporary policy regimes, in order to inform efforts to improve working conditions for practitioners and, by extension, the educational experiences of learners.

Morpho-Phonemic Analysis Boosts Word Reading For Adult Struggling Readers, Susan H. Gray, Linnea C. Ehri, John C. Locke

Publications and Research

A randomized control trial compared the effects of two kinds of vocabulary instruction on component reading skills of adult struggling readers. Participants seeking alternative high school diplomas received 8 h of scripted tutoring to learn forty academic vocabulary words embedded within a civics curriculum. They were matched for language background and reading levels, then randomly assigned to either morpho-phonemic analysis teaching word origins, morpheme and syllable structures, or traditional whole word study teaching multiple sentence contexts, meaningful connections, and spellings. Both groups made comparable gains in learning the target words, but the morpho-phonemic group showed greater gains in reading unfamiliar …

Literacy For Adults In Fragile States: Design Adaptations For Successful Implementation, Cristine A. Smith, Wendy Wheaton

Cristine Smith