Improving Adult Literacy Outcomes : Lessons from Cognitive Research for Developing Countries
Despite the existence of about one billion illiterates in the world, adult literacy programs make up 1-5 percent of government or donor budgets, and they remain severely underfunded in comparison to primary education. Though dropout and course comp...
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| Language: | English en_US |
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2013
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2003/06/2427511/improving-adult-literacy-outcomes-lessons-cognitive-research-developing-countries http://hdl.handle.net/10986/15136 |
| Summary: | Despite the existence of about one
billion illiterates in the world, adult literacy programs
make up 1-5 percent of government or donor budgets, and they
remain severely underfunded in comparison to primary
education. Though dropout and course completion rates
improved in the 1990s, the outcomes of literacy instruction
are still modest and may have improved little since the
1970s. The results may disappoint governments and donors who
expect that once taught, people will have usable skills and
remain literate. The modest results make it hard to increase
coverage and to argue for increased expenditures for this
sector. The results may be due to inefficient instruction
but also to the structure of human memory, which has
important implications for adult literacy acquisition. The
need to learn the rapid recognition of complex patterns
poses problems that are not apparent to people who became
expert readers in their childhood. |
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