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Int. J. of Educational Development 19 (1999) 219–234 www.elsevier.com/locate/ijedudev Improving the quality of adult literacy programmes in developing countries: the ‘real literacies’ approach Alan Rogers * School of Continuing Education, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK Abstract This paper looks at some of the characteristics of traditional adult literacy programmes in developing countries. Drawing on case studies in Asia and Africa, it outlines an experimental approach using texts found in local communities and chosen by the literacy participants rather than or as well as literacy primers, and indicates the underlying concepts on which this approach is based. It assesses some of the strengths and weaknesses of this approach and concludes that in some circumstances, it is worthy of experimental use. The main problem is how to evaluate its success in achieving its goals. 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: 1. Conversation in rural Bangladesh Interviewer: How long have you been the leader of this women’s group? Woman: Seven years. Interviewer: And you cannot read or write? Woman: No—I have never been to school. Interviewer: When was the last time you wrote a letter? * Noel Close, 5 Adderley Street, Uppingham, Rutland LE15 9PP, UK. E-mail: [email protected] 0738-0593/99/$ - see front matter 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S0738-0593(99)00015-2 Woman: Ten days ago. Interviewer: What was that about? Woman: One of our members had lost her ration card, and I had to write to the zilla parishad (local council) to get a new one for her. Interviewer: How did you write that letter? Woman: My ten-year-old son wrote it for me. (Rogers, 1988) This conversation, recorded in the field in Bang-

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Page 1: Improving the quality of adult literacy programmes in developing countries: the `real literacies' approach

Int. J. of Educational Development 19 (1999) 219–234www.elsevier.com/locate/ijedudev

Improving the quality of adult literacy programmes indeveloping countries: the ‘real literacies’ approach

Alan Rogers*

School of Continuing Education, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK

Abstract

This paper looks at some of the characteristics of traditional adult literacy programmes in developing countries.Drawing on case studies in Asia and Africa, it outlines an experimental approach using texts found in local communitiesand chosen by the literacy participants rather than or as well as literacy primers, and indicates the underlying conceptson which this approach is based. It assesses some of the strengths and weaknesses of this approach and concludes thatin some circumstances, it is worthy of experimental use. The main problem is how to evaluate its success in achievingits goals. 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:

1. Conversation in rural Bangladesh

Interviewer: How long have youbeen the leader of thiswomen’s group?

Woman: Seven years.

Interviewer: And you cannot read orwrite?

Woman: No—I have never beento school.

Interviewer: When was the last timeyou wrote a letter?

* Noel Close, 5 Adderley Street, Uppingham, Rutland LE159PP, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

0738-0593/99/$ - see front matter 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.PII: S0738 -0593(99 )00015-2

Woman: Ten days ago.

Interviewer: What was that about?

Woman: One of our membershad lost her ration card,and I had to write tothe zilla parishad(localcouncil) to get a newone for her.

Interviewer: How did you write thatletter?

Woman: My ten-year-old sonwrote it for me.

(Rogers, 1988)This conversation, recorded in the field in Bang-

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ladesh in 1988, is remarkable. It shows that awoman, categorised by aid agencies (and byherself) as being ‘illiterate’, is in fact quite nor-mally, and apparently regularly, engaging in liter-acy activities without any sense of disadvantage. Itchallenges traditional approaches to adult literacywhich see ‘illiterates’ as persons signally disadvan-taged and unable to engage in developmentalactivities until they have mastered the skills ofreading and writing through a special programmeof adult literacy classes. Nor is this conversationunique: throughout the developing world, thou-sands of men and women are living their dailylives, engaging in literacy practices without havingthe skills of reading and writing, despite all theefforts of aid agencies to provide adult literacyclasses for them (Street, 1984; Hodge, 1997).

2. Problems with adult literacy programmes

It is widely agreed that existing models of adultliteracy programmes have failed to deliver whathas been claimed for them. Although, in somecases, impressive statistical results have beenobtained from special campaigns, as in Tanzaniaand Nicaragua, these have not always lasted, as thehigh figures of those classified (by various criteria)as being ‘illiterate’ or ‘semi-literate’ in these coun-tries show (Carr-Hill et al., 1991; Rogers, 1993).

Two main problems may be identified as under-lying the causes of this failure of traditionalapproaches to teaching literacy skills to adults. Thefirst is the problem of‘motivating’ adultsfor par-ticipation in adult literacy learning programmes.To this end, vigorous efforts are made to exalt thevalue of literacy and the disadvantages of being‘illiterate’. Exaggerated (and in many cases clearlyfalse) promises about the socioeconomic benefitsof ‘being literate’ are made to the participants—what may be called the ‘you’ll-never-be-cheated’approach. Literacy is stressed as ‘the key to devel-opment’ (a phrase which UNESCO has dissemi-nated widely throughout the developing world).Some practitioners have referred to a ‘constantbattle’ to motivate adults and to keep them mot-ivated. To some extent, these efforts work; severalprogrammes have reported a good deal of success

in this field. Adults do attend, sometimes in con-siderable numbers. But most programmes reportirregular attendance and very high ‘drop-out’rates—a feature of existing programmes which hasbeen studied in various places (there is some dis-agreement as to whether these are ‘drop-outs’ orwhether they are people who are ‘pushed out’ bythe various constraints of the existing programmes,including the norms of ‘participation’ which maybe imposed on the participants; Robinson-Pant,1997, p. 186).

The stress that is laid on the socioeconomicbenefits of learning literacy skills by agencies con-cerned to motivate adults to participate in adult lit-eracy classes is however often mistaken. For itleads the participants to assume that they willbenefit directly from learning literacy skills in aclassroom setting. But in practice, the socioecon-omic benefits which arise from literacy do notspring fromlearning literacy skills, but fromusingliteracy skills in real life to achieve real goals setby the participants (ODA, 1994). The aim of adultliteracy programmes, then, and the measure bywhich their success should be judged, should notbe the learning of literacy but the use of literacyskills. To give an example: if out of a class of 30literacy learners, 25 pass the test at the end of thecourse, but yet after 6 months, it is found that onlyfive of themare reading and writing in their dailylives, the success rate in this instance should surelybe only five, not 25, despite the test results.

It is this emphasis on the value oflearningratherthan using literacy skills which accounts for thesecond main failure of these programmes, theirinability to help the participants totransfer the lit-eracy skillsthey learn in the classroom or literacycentreinto use in their daily lives. The case of theNepali woman who said, ‘I can read the primer(literacy textbook) but I cannot read anything else’(Rogers, 1994) can be replicated in most countries.A recent study of those income-generation activi-ties which accompany adult literacy classes showsthis failure clearly. The participants rarely use liter-acy in these activities. For example, one group inKenya engaged in goat rearing said that they couldnot read the word ‘goat’—‘because it is not in theprimer’. This is typical of many such programmesin many countries: what is learned in the literacy

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class is not normally used in the income-generationwork. There are a few projects which do make thistransfer. A women’s group in Delhi, for instance,engaged in sewing advertising banners to hangacross the roads, are using their new literacy skillsto earn money. But these are rare (Rogers, 1994).The numbers of persons coming through adult lit-eracy learning programmes who can and do readfluently and with understanding regularly in theirdaily lives or who use writing and reading toadvance their daily activities, while not completelyinsignificant, are in fact small. A widely distributedpaper by Dr Helen Abadzi (1992) of the WorldBank has revealed something of the scale of thisfailure, although most commentators disagree withher diagnosis of the problem as lying in thepsychological characteristics of adult learners.

Throughout the world, efforts are being made tofind new ways of developing more effective adultliteracy programmes (some are listed in a forth-coming report on post-literacy, DFID,forthcoming). New ‘more relevant’ primers arebeing created. Better training programmes for liter-acy instructors (facilitators; animators; volunteerteachers or whatever term is used for thesepersons) are being devised, especially built onmore participatory approaches (Training for Trans-formation, 1984; Directorate of Adult Education,1985; PRIA, 1989). New programmes of ‘post-lit-eracy’ to reinforce the skill learning already achi-eved are being created, for example in Kenya andIndia (Dumont, 1990; NLM, 1995; Thompson,1998). In Nepal, Save the Children (US) hasdeveloped a family post-literacy programme bywhich literacy learners in their classes are encour-aged to keep a diary of family events or a familyhealth record (freely and/or under certain headingswhich have been given to them) (Comings et al.,1992; Leve, 1993; Manandhar, 1993), and otheragencies are creating ways of helping participantsto transfer their new skills into their daily lives.But these are not activities which the participantsthemselves feel they need to keep up; they havebeen requested to do them by the literacy providingagencies, so they are rarely maintained for long.Completely new approaches are more rare:REFLECT which links Participatory RuralAppraisal (PRA, 1991) to adult literacy learning

and community development activities at locallevel is one such new approach (Archer andCottingham, 1996). The World Bank has set up areview of new methods of developing more effec-tive approaches to adult literacy (World Bank,1998).

This paper describes one such approach, whatwe have called the ‘real literacies approach’, whichseeks to make existing models of teaching literacyskills to adults more effective. The background tothe development of this approach is as follows.Between 1995 and 1998, Education for Develop-ment was invited by DFID to provide a series oftraining programmes for practitioners from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and govern-ment-organised adult literacy programmes in Ban-gladesh, and during 1997–98 these were openedto participants from Botswana and Namibia. Pre-course and follow-up visits were made to thesecountries to see the participants in their workplaces. Further, a series of training workshops wasprovided through the sponsorship of the BritishCouncil in West Africa for participants fromGhana, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Nigeria and othercountries, and other training events have been heldin Nepal and South Africa for field-level andmiddle-level adult literacy practitioners. It was dur-ing these activities that the real literacies approachhas been developed, and the approach is being usedin many of these countries (Education for Develop-ment, 1997-98). The paper sets out the justifi-cations for this approach, together with some ofthe issues and problems which accompany it.While not wishing to promote a new orthodoxy,it argues that this is one approach which literacy-providing agencies can experiment with in theirown local context.

3. The real literacies approach

The ‘real literacies approach’ shares the samebasic principle as existing literacy programmes. Itseeks to help people to develop their skills of liter-acy, so that they can use these enhanced skills toundertake real literacy tasks in their daily lives inthe main spheres which surround them—at work,in the home and/or in the community—and thus

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improve the quality of life of themselves and theirfamily/community. But the starting point for thisapproach is very different from that of traditionaladult literacy learning programmes.

3.1. Positive, not negative

The real literacies approach does not start off bystressing the disadvantages of being ‘illiterate’, bysaying that non-literate persons cannot engage indevelopment until they have learned literacy skills.Nor does it exaggerate the benefits of learning toread and write skilfully. Instead, it starts by sayingthat every person—whatever their level of literacyskills, even entirely non-literate persons—arealready engaged in literacy tasks and activities dur-ing the course of their lives. Clearly the nature ofsuch activities will vary; but the researches of sev-eral persons such as Professor Doronila and herteam in the Philippines (Doronila, 1996) haverevealed clearly that the level of these activitiesrelate to the cultural and economic activity of thewhole community, not to the level of skills of theindividual adult. In her case studies, all the mem-bers of the fishing communities and hill terrace far-mers had lower engagement with literacy tasksthan all the members of the urban slums she exam-ined. It had nothing to do with the personal skillsof individuals, everything to do with the context inwhich they lived.

The real literacies approach then does not startwith the classroom but with what the participantsare already doing in their daily lives. It does notstart with a deficit model (what the participantslack, what they cannot do) but with a positive atti-tude towards the participants (what they arealready doing). Non-literate persons receive andwrite letters; they communicate with the schooltheir children attend, fill in essential forms,exchange money for goods and services, travel totown; they obtain ration cards, learn from electionposters and signs and other notices, understandsigns over buildings and symbols on variouslocations such as a hospital, watch people readingnewspapers and often access the information inthese papers; they scan advertisements and inspectpackages in the shops they visit or on the medi-

cines they get (Heath, 1983; Barton, 1994a, b;Baynham, 1995).

In dealing with these daily literacy experiences,they adopt their own strategies. Some get otherpersons to read and write for them. They accessand create letters or other forms of literacy throughthe agency of other persons (family, friends, neigh-bours, government workers etc). Some use visualclues. One woman in Delhi reported that she hadno problem catching her bus home from the marketshe visited; rather than ask for information, shewaited until she saw someone she knew getting onthe bus and therefore knew this was her bus(Rogers, 1976). They tie knots in string or makemarks on walls to keep records of transactions. (Itis widely assumed that ‘illiterates’ cannot count,but there is a great deal of field evidence that theycan count and calculate: they may not be able todo school-type sums, but they calculate frequentlyand accurately, Rampal et al., 1998).

For literacy is of course a part of a process ofcommunication. Communication consists of a mix-ture of oral, written and visual elements in differentproportions. All persons engaged in communi-cation use all of these different elements. Literatepersons use non-literate strategies (visual and oral).Goods are bought, not only by reading but more bytheir location in the shop, their size or packaging orshape or colour. Doors are opened because of signson them, not because of the words they carry. Evenso-called ‘literate’ people often ask orally aboutbuses rather than read the complicated and smallprint of the bus timetable. We all use a range ofcommunication strategies (Street, 1998).

The case study of the woman in Delhi who saidthat she chooses her bus by the sight of other per-sons can be used to explore this further. The buscompany wishes to communicate to its users thatthis bus will be going to certain places. It uses anumber and the name of one place on its sign-board; and those who ask other more knowledge-able persons or who consult the timetable or whoalready know from experience realise that in theprocess of reaching its end point, the bus wouldpass close to the point where they wish to be,although this is not stated openly. Few buses(usually only express coaches) indicate every stop-ping place; they communicate their stopping points

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indirectly through a single sign and name. On theother side of the equation, the woman concernedaccesses that information in her own way. She isjoining in the social communication of her owncommunity. She is not excluded from that com-munity because she cannot read and write. She,like all non-literates, is engaging in real literacytasks, using her own skills and experience.

3.2. Learning from real literacy tasks

The ‘real literacies approach’ starts with the realliteracy tasks which individuals undertake in theirown lives rather than with generalised literacytasks set out in a primer. It says that the best wayfor adults to learn literacy skills is by using theactivities which they are already undertaking orwhich they wish to do in their own lives. It there-fore introduces these real literacy activities into thelearning programme in the classroom.

The word ‘real’ is used here, not to denigratethe classroom programme of the traditional adultliteracy programme. Rather the term indicates thatthese are tasks and activities which go on in the‘real’ world outside of the classroom. The activitiesdevised for adults to learn in the classroom are‘special’ activities. They have been carefully cre-ated to achieve learning goals, and they use speci-ally prepared texts. The tasks and activities whichthe ‘real literacies approach’ adopts to help adultsto learn their literacy skills are based on the textswhich already exist in the community, the ‘foundtexts’.

3.3. Adult experiential learning

The justification for using the literacy taskswhich individuals already undertake in their ownlives as the basis for learning literacy skills lies inmodern understandings of adult learning(Brookfield, 1986; Jarvis, 1987). Adults, it is nowfelt, seeking to make sense of their world, to achi-eve their own goals, however basic those goalsmay be, learn experientially (Carter, 1997). Theylearn by doing what they are called upon to do orwhat they set before themselves to achieve. Theylearn from their everyday activities in the realworld around them. They do not, like children,

learn first and then practise afterwards. They learnby practising for real. They learn farming by realfarming, they learn fishing by fishing, they learncooking by cooking, they learn parenting by par-enting for real. In the same way, they will learnliteracy skills by engaging in real literacy tasks.

The truth of this can be seen from the fact thatin three recent studies of literacy in the field incountries as far apart as Brazil, Sierra Leone andthe Philippines, a significant number of personswere found who had learned their literacy skillswithout either going to school or attending adultliteracy classes (Pemagbi, 1995; Doronila, 1996;Stromquist, 1997). They had learned literacy skillsfrom scratch through their daily experiences, andwere using their skills for the advancement of theirown lives and families.

If adults learn most from their daily experiencesrather than from pre-set prescribed learning pro-grammes, it may be argued that the most effectiveway for adults to learn literacy skills is from theirown daily literacy experiences. The fundamentaldistinction between the real literacy approach andthe traditional literacy approach is that, while manytraditional literacy programmes deny that illiterateadults have such daily literacy experiences, the realliteracy approach starts from the assumption thatall persons have some daily literacy experiencesfrom which they can learn.

This approach is not only likely to be moreeffective in bringing about sustainable learning inthe adult participants. It will also help towardsovercoming the two main problems which (as wehave already seen) face traditional programmes.First, if the participants identify what they want toread and write, the literacy tasks they are alreadyundertaking, the communications they wish toengage in, this will clearly help towards the motiv-ation of the participants. Rather than doing whatthe literacy teaching agency says they should do(primer exercises), they will be doing what theywant to do, reading texts and writing scripts whichthey have chosen.

Further, it will help with the second problem,enabling the participants to take this learning backout into the community. The problem which manyadult literacy learners have is to see how the primerexercises which they learn in the classroom can be

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used in their daily lives. For many people, literacyhas become compartmentalised—they see it as anactivity which goes on in a literacy centre, as beingschool-based, divorced from their reality. Theycannot see how they can use the literacy textbookat home; its discourse is quite different from theirdiscourse outside the classroom. On the other hand,real literacy tasks identified by the literacy learnersthemselves from their own experience and broughtin from the local community to the literacy learn-ing centre will clearly be of greater relevance thanprimer exercises devised centrally and applied toall the different adult literacy groups in diversecommunities which is the norm in most literacyprogrammes. These adults will be learning for apurpose, their own purpose, to fulfil a real literacytask which they have chosen and which they wishto achieve.

3.4. Contextualisation and decontextualisation

The relevance of the literacy activities which goon in the classroom to the participants’ daily livesis universally recognised as a vital component ofany programme developed for adults. But in liter-acy, it is not a matter simply of choosing wordswhich appear to be relevant to the literacy learners.For literacy (reading and writing) is not just decod-ing words and sentences. Rather, it is finding outthe meaning of written words and using thesewords to create meaningful messages. We can seethis plainly when we say that non-literate personsstare at a text ‘with incomprehension’; they cannotmake out the meaning of the words and sentences.The aim of learning literacy skills is not to identifyindividual letters and words but to get the sense ofthe text.

But meaning derives from context: there is nomeaning without context. Traditional approachesto literacy teaching tend to assume that words havean intrinsic meaning, a universal meaning whichwill apply in all contexts. But this is not true.Words are context-dependent, not autonomous.

Traditional literacy primers decontextualisewords or sentences. These words are printed on apage and they have no reality apart from being ina textbook. For example, the word ‘ball’ may beprinted on a textbook page. A picture may indicate

that it means a play ball and not a dance (whichin some contexts the word ‘ball’ means). But theword ‘ball’ even when used in a game can meandifferent things. A child’s plaything is quite differ-ent in meaning from the word ‘ball’ when appliedto a World Cup football game. A statement suchas ‘Owen got a good ball from Collymore’, raisesall kinds of questions, such as how can a ball be‘good’ (or ‘bad’)? Similarly, the word ‘cat’ usedin a literacy primer is decontextualised: a picturemay show that it means a domestic cat rather thana tiger or a whip, but even then, it has no meaningbecause it has no context.

We can illustrate this from a Hindi primer writ-ten for women in India (SRC). Among the wordschosen wereagni (fire) and puri (water), on thegrounds that these were words which would be ofparticular interest to women. But the women whowere called upon to learn through such decontex-tualised words asked, ‘when do we ever need toread these words or to write them?’ They did notsee the relevanceto themof such words in writtenform, however often they used them orally. When,however, these words were placed in the contextof two recent newspaper reports, one of a slum firewhich devastated an urban area which thesewomen knew, killing some people with whom thegroup were acquainted, and the other of a shortageof water in their own locality and which they allhad experienced, immediately the wordsagni andpuri had meaning, they made sense; and thewomen immediately became interested in learningto read those wordsin that context. Decontex-tualised, they were not relevant; contextualised,they were clear motivators.

The traditional approach to adults learning liter-acy, drawing on school models, says that adults,like children, must learn to read decontextualisedwords first (indeed to learn letters first and thendecontextualised words) and only later to see themin sentences when they suddenly gain meaning.Only afterlearningcan theyusewords in contexts.The programme is thought to be sequential: theparticipants pass from ‘illiteracy’ to a literacy classand to becoming neo-literate, then post-literate,and then into continuing education based on newuses of literacy, the process ending eventually by

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the participants becoming independent readers(ACCU, 1988, 1993).

Adult learning theory, on the other hand, saysthat adults do not normally learn in such a linearway. Adult learning takes place to meet animmediate goal and when that goal has beenreached, the learning motivation ceases. It is there-fore a much more ‘messy’ process, and because ittakes place to meet immediate needs arising fromreal situations, adults often find it difficult to learneffectively from decontextualised textbookmaterial. They learn through the meaning of thematerial, which arises from the immediate situ-ation. Learning for adults is always situated learn-ing. It is always purposeful, to achieve a goalwhich the adults have set for themselves (Rogers,J. 1977; Rogers, A. 1996). This is the primary jus-tification for bringing contextualised literacyactivities and materials chosen by the adult literacylearners into the classroom. They bring in withthem the texts they wish to read or the materialthey wish to write; they choose the purpose forwhich they wish to learn literacy skills.

Freire saw this, and therefore chose generativewords from within a real context—thefavella inwhich the participants lived (Freire, 1972). But hethen decontextualised these generative words(although the discussion which accompanied theliteracy learning tried to keep the context alive).The words were broken down into syllables, so thatnew (decontextualised) words could be created andlearned. It was only after they had been learnedthat they were put back into a context where theygained meaning.

The real literacies approach then encourages theparticipants to bring their own literacy tasks—andwith that their own literacy texts—into the class-room. The agencies invite the participants to decidenot simply when and where they wish to learn butalsowhat they want to learn, what tasks they wishto do. And this means that behind every real liter-acy class there lies a process of surveying the localliteracy practices of the learning group and of itsmembers. This is a pre-requisite for the learningprogramme.

The process is relatively straightforward,although as we shall see it calls for special qualitiesfrom the facilitator. Participants are encouraged to

bring along some real literacy activities which theywish to engage in, some real literacy texts whichthey wish to learn to read (or write). Small groupswork inside the class on these tasks, students help-ing students, sharing experiences.

3.5. Real literacy materials or real literacytasks?

In traditional literacy programmes, the term‘materials’ means two things: the special teaching-learning texts (primers and other teaching-learningmaterials such as flash cards etc.) which the pro-viders prepare and issue, and secondly, speciallyprepared texts designed either to get informationacross or to help the readers to improve their liter-acy skills. ‘Materials’ refers to those pieces of writ-ing created specifically to help people to learnsomething. They may be books, booklets or otherprinted matter written by experts or by partici-patory workshops, or they may be learner-gener-ated, in which case the participants help to preparethe learning materials (Meyer, 1996).

In the real literacies approach, however,‘materials’ are not something specially written forlearning. They are the real written or printed textswhich exist in the local community. In every townand village there are lots of these materials—elec-tion posters, bus tickets, bank forms, T-shirts,religious materials, calendars, graffiti on walls,wrappings around food or cigarettes or medicines,newspapers etc. They get everywhere, these realliteracy materials. Entering a Nepalese village sev-eral kilometres from the main road, the first sightseen was a young person sitting on a wall readinga film magazine. Lists drawn up in Bangladesh,Ghana and Nigeria reveal a much wider range ofthese texts than had been anticipated (Pemagbi andRogers, 1996; Omolewa et al., 1997).

However, when the ‘real literacies approach’was first being developed in connection with thetraining programme for adult literacy workers fromBangladesh (1995–98) (Education for Develop-ment, 1997-98), stress was laid on identifying andusing these ‘real literacy materials’ in class. Theliteracy workers (at facilitator and middle levelmanagement) were encouraged to go out into thecommunity, to help the participants to survey what

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texts existed in the local environment and to bringthese into the classes. The facilitators were trainedin how to use such texts for learning literacy skills.Government notices, graffiti on walls, extensionleaflets, post office material, health forms, news-papers and magazines, shop advertisements etc.were among the material used in classroom con-texts for learning literacy skills.

The traditional approach took over once more.Parts of these ‘found texts’ began to be handledin the classes in a decontextualised way. Electionposters in Bangladesh were used to help the stu-dents to identify a word here and a word theretaken out of their context, just like an alternativeprimer. Newspapers in Egypt were used in thesame way. In Botswana, material was collectedfrom a Coca Cola stand and brought in by the facil-itators, with the consequent danger of participantslearning to read the words ‘Coca Cola’ and nothingelse (Education for Development, 1998). Theywere simply treated as containing ‘words’, notmessages. The literacy learning programme wentback to the traditional paradigm, but using a differ-ent ‘primer’ made up of words chosen from textsidentified by the literacy learners.

This danger however seems to be less when wetalk of ‘real literacytasks’ rather than ‘real literacymaterials’. What is the task which is intended bythe newspaper, the election poster, the Coca Colaadvertising material? How can we join in that task?What kind of materials will we use and what pro-cesses will we engage in? (It is interesting that inthe case of ‘Coca Cola’, the advertisers do not infact intend anyone to ‘read’ the words but simplyto recognise the image, its shape and colour. Thatis the literacy (or communicative) task. A persondoes not need to be ‘literate’ to get the messageand to buy the product).

The reformulation of this approach to adult liter-acy in terms of ‘real literacy tasks’ also helps toovercome another issue relating to real literacymaterials. Positing the learning process in terms oftasks has enabled the programme organisers andparticipants to identify materials which do not yetexist in the local community, texts which need tobe ‘fetched’ into the social environment: maga-zines, for example, which do not reach into somevillages, or post office letter forms etc. And it also

helps to identify activities which will require theparticipants to ‘create’ texts for themselves—let-ters, notes, shopping lists, accounts, for example.The materials to be used for learning literacy can-not be confined to those texts which may alreadyexist locally; texts can also befetched into thecommunity orcreatedin the process of completingliteracy tasks chosen by the participants.

3.6. Case studies

A telling example of this approach comes froma literacy programme in Jaipur run in the early1980s by the State Resource Centre of Rajasthan.Members of a women’s literacy group in an urbanslum indicated that they were bored by the literacyprimer, although it had been written specificallywith women’s interests in mind. When asked whatthey wanted to read, several of them brought alongcinema notices from the local newspapers of filmsthen currently showing in the town. They went tothe cinema regularly, despite their poverty. Thefacilitator, getting the participants to work ingroups, used these texts for the class. Because theywere keen, and because they already knew all thewords on those notices and their meanings (thename and street of the cinema, the title of the filmRam Tera Desh, the names of the film stars, thedates, the prices of the seats etc.), the participantswere able to learn to read these notices speedilyand with a high level of achievement. Their confi-dence and pride quickly grew. They took the textshome with considerable excitement (more than canbe said of literacy learners with primers) andshowed others that they could read these notices.Other women asked to join the literacy classes,saying, ‘We did not know that literacy was likethis’. It was possible to build many different activi-ties on this—such as numeracy work based on theprices of seats and class numbers, a group visit tothe film, discussion on gender roles as portrayedin the film and even the writing by the class groupof a short notice about the film to distribute aroundtheir slum. Although this programme came to asudden halt because the slum residents wereremoved from that site (which they had been occu-pying illegally) and the programme was neverresumed, nevertheless, it is an illustration of how

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adult participants can learn literacy skills througha task which they choose for themselves (Rogers,1983).

It is important that this example should not betaken as a new universal model. Those who areexperimenting with the real literacies approach arenot advocating that everyone should use cinemanotices. What they are saying is that literacy activi-ties from the local community can be includedamong the various learning tasks which will helpthe participants to learn literacy skills. The identi-fication and collection of these materials is oftendone by both the facilitator and the participants,and indeed other persons in the locality may helpwhen it becomes known that the literacy centre iscollecting such material. In the programme LABE(Literacy and Adult Basic Education) in Uganda,the women brought in health census forms andfilled them up in class, one for each family rep-resented, again one student helping another in acooperative way. This was what concerned themat the time (Kiirya, personal communication). InNigeria, it was signs and notices in the market. Thetasks, and the materials which go with those tasks,will always be locally determined.

The real literacies approach then is based on thepremise that adults will learn literacy skills moreeffectively and transfer these skills into daily usein their lives if they are able to bring their ownliteracy tasks into the classroom rather than try totake the teacher’s literacy tasks learned in theclassroom out into their daily lives. This wouldseem to be common sense.

The use of the real literacies approach is spread-ing, and is beginning to have an effect on the trans-fer of literacy skills from the classroom into dailyuse in people’s lives. In Bangladesh, a Real Liter-acies Forum (now re-titled the New LiteraciesForum) has been established to promote the use ofreal literacy tasks in literacy learning programmes.Training programmes for literacy animators havebeen developed and papers circulated. In WestAfrica, a regional grouping has emerged based onSierra Leone, and a handbook produced. Two man-uals to help literacy instructors in the use of realmaterials in literacy programmes have been pre-pared, both of them arising from a workshop heldin Ghana for literacy practitioners from West

Africa (Pemagbi and Rogers, 1996; Omolewa etal., 1997), and similar aids are in preparation inBangladesh. The same approach is being used else-where. Harvard University in a recent researchreport talks about “life-contextualised” and “life-decontextualised” literacy programmes, the con-textualised programmes being those “that use notextbooks, only materials from students’ lives$

[or] a combination of student realia and work-books” (Harvard, 1997). In Senegal, a village liter-acy project “exposes the participants to real textsfrom day one and encourages them to create texts.Because they are familiar with the text’s content,reading comes more easily” (Guttman, 1995, p.14). It remains to be seen whether this approachis more successful than earlier movements, but itssuccess will be judged, not by how many peoplelearn to read and write in class (i.e. how many passa test showing that theycan read and write certainset texts, as in traditional adult literacyprogrammes), but by how many actually are read-ing and writing in their everyday lives (i.e. whatliteracy activities theydo do).

4. Some issues and problems with the realliteracies approach

We need however to look at some of the issuesand problems which have been identified with thisapproach to learning literacy skills and which mayhinder its wider adoption.

4.1. Different literacies

The first is that recent research has demonstratedconvincingly that there are many different kinds ofliteracy tasks (Baynham, 1995). Professor Doronilain the Philippines studied 13 local communitiesand found many different kinds of literacy prac-tices among them (Doronila, 1996). Similarly, Bar-ton and Hamilton have shown in a different contexthow literacy skills are used by different groups toachieve quite different purposes (Barton and Ham-ilton, 1998).

A study of a Tamil village (Ayun Poruvai inTrichy District) conducted in 1998 found severalliteracy focal points, each with its own literacy:

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I the school and adult literacy centre (school-based literacy)

I a women’s group meeting in one of the women’shouses (developmental literacy)

I the church (religious literacy)I the clinic (health literacy)I the shop (commercial literacy)I village administrative office (developmental lit-

eracy, extension)

There was also a post-literacy village librarycontaining mostly developmental texts from exten-sion agencies, which was very rarely used. (Therewas no police station or post office in this village,both literacy focal points in many other villages).Apart from this, there were the domestic literaciesthroughout the village—newspapers, letters, calen-dars on the walls of most houses. And there werealso literacies for special events such as festivals orweddings and funerals, and particularly elections.Some of these literacies of course overlapped: theextension literacy of the village administrativeoffice was close to but wider than that of the clinic;and the school-based literacy primer attempted touse developmental literacies, although this textnever came close to the literacy practices neededto participate in developmental literacies. On theother hand, the literacy practices of the self-helpgroup was mostly participant-generated, keepingrecords of savings and trading in connection withmushroom growing and gem polishing etc.; and thereligious literacies were quite distinct and were feltto be distinct (Rogers, 1998b).

This is not unusual: in South Africa, studieshave again revealed that different groups have dif-ferent literacies. For example, the literacy practicesof taxi drivers were shown to be specific to thatoccupation (using maps, road signs, engine man-uals, receipts, names on buildings etc., Prinslooand Breier, 1996). The same can be said of differ-ent groups such as hospital porters (ambulance,drugs, bandages, names of wards and departmentsetc.) or workers in a car factory or a mining com-pany (safety notices, instructions, products andprocesses, machines, materials, notices of meet-ings etc.).

In the light of this growing awareness of manydifferent local literacies, to put those involved in

very different literacies through a common literacyprogramme using generalised primers would notseem to be the most effective way of helping theseadults to learn literacy skills. There can be littlejustification for having a common literacy learningprogramme or a common primer: why should taxidrivers and hospital porters or car workers leavetheir workplaces and sit down together to study acommon primer consisting of decontextualisedwords like ‘ball’ and ‘cat’ etc. (or their linguisticequivalents)?

It is often argued that existing literacy primersare needs-based: that the needs of farmers or fish-erfolk or indeed of women have been identified byexperts, and that these needs have been used forcreating words for learning (ACCU, 1992, 1996).But the needs are generalised needs—they are theneeds ofall farmers or all women or all fisherfolketc. They are not specific to the different groupsof adults who are wishing to learn literacy skills.But (for example) individual women have individ-ual concerns and interests. Those with young chil-dren have quite different concerns from olderwomen or unmarried women. Again, different far-mers and different fisherfolk will have their owninterests and concerns: for example, one Madrasfishing community was worried about fishermenfrom neighbouring areas using motorboats to fishin their traditional areas, a worry that was not rep-resented in their literacy primer.

For adults, it is thesespecificinterests and con-cerns which form the motivation for learning, notgeneralisedneeds. Adult groups are not like chil-dren’s classes, grouped together because they aremore or less at the same point of their develop-ment. Any adult group will be much more widelyvaried than any class of children. The tea pickersin Bangladesh or in Sri Lanka will not have muchin common with the nearby farmers; they havedeveloped their own literacy practices.

The problem then is how to encompass such awide range of diversity within an adult literacylearning programme. And this raises a secondissue, therelationship between the real literaciesapproach to the traditional approach to learn-ing literacy. The training programmes with theBangladesh literacy practitioners referred to abovesuggest that the most practical and effective way

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of developing this approach is to create an overlap,to introduce real literacy tasks into existing literacyclasses slowly, gradually taking over from theexisting primer. An overlapping model has beendeveloped (see Fig. 1).

It is unlikely that a complete abandonment ofthe existing pattern of classes will be possible; itis not likely to be acceptable to either providersor participants. At the moment, for example, realliteracies approaches are being introduced into sev-eral NGO programmes in Bangladesh alongside theexisting programme, and the Government pro-gramme of the Directorate of Non-Formal Edu-cation is also experimenting with real literacymaterials, again alongside the official primer. Fieldreports indicate an increase in motivation amongthe participants.

A third issue is the doubt which a number ofproviders have that in many local communities inrural areas of developing countriesthere are notenough real literacy materials to be used in thisway. This is undoubtedly a major issue with thisapproach to learning literacy skills. It is true that,in some contexts (especially those of non-standard-ised or non-dominant languages), there may be areal lack of found texts (Robinson, 1994). But sur-veys of real literacy materials in Ghana, Nigeria,India and Bangladesh, among other cases, haverevealed that in fact much more exists than is oftenrecognised (Pemagbi and Rogers, 1996; Hodge,1997; Omolewa et al., 1997). There is at timessomething of a resource myopia about literacy (asabout other forms of development). The com-munity is viewed in the same way as the so-called‘illiterates’, as suffering from a deficit of literacymaterials which need to be brought in from the

Fig. 1. Relationship between real literacies approach and the traditional approach to learning literacy. A version of this diagramappeared initially in ODA (1994).

outside. Such a comment often comes from peoplewho are looking for a certain type of text, and whooverlook other kinds of found texts in the com-munity.

Some traditional programmes, working on theassumption that there is nothing for people to readin many villages, have laid stress on the necessityof providing post-literacy programmes, supplyingfollow-up or supplementary materials to local read-ing centres. India and Kenya are currently launch-ing major post-literacy programmes (Education forDevelopment, forthcoming). But post-literacy pro-grammes have in general been even less successfulthan the initial literacy teaching programmes. Theyusually reach only a small fraction of those whocomplete adult literacy classes; and evaluations ofvillage libraries regularly reveal their lack of useby those for whom they are intended (see DFID,forthcoming).

However, as we have seen above, it may bemore helpful to answer this objection by concen-trating on real literacytasksrather than real literacymaterials(found texts). In every community, thereis no scarcity of ‘real literacy tasks’, activitieswhich require written material to be brought in orcreated to achieve a task which some people wishto promote and other members of the communitywish to participate in. If there are no such literacytasks, then there surely is no point in helping adultsin that community to learn literacy skills whichthey will never be able to use. One does not botherto learn the skill of fishing when one is in an inlandarea without the opportunity to use those skills.One does not learn rice farming in an arid land-scape. In these circumstances, it may be necessaryto build up a literate environment until there are

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enough real literacy tasks for the community mem-bers to engage in before teaching the literacy skillsneeded to do these tasks.

In part, of course, this comment is built on aview thatmany of the found texts are too diffi-cult for literacy learning. Again, there may bemuch truth in this. In one instance in Bangladesh,a group of women in a BRAC adult literacy classsaid they wanted to work with the Marriage Regis-tration Form. But after a time they indicated thatit was too complex and that the print was too smallfor them. It was possible in this case to encouragethe group and the facilitator to try to re-write theform in simpler language, to debate the need forall the different kinds of information required onthe form, and to make representations to the localregistration office about the usefulness of this formin its present format to the persons it was intendedfor (Mazhar, 1998).

We need, however, to distinguish two elementsin this comment. First, there is the idea that thisapproach is too difficult for the literacyanimators/facilitatorsto use in their work. Thismay of course be largely true; for many of the faci-litators themselves find the tasks of reading whatis needed for their daily lives and writing suchtexts as they need very difficult.

It is clear from the Bangladesh example citedabove that many literacy facilitators require a greatdeal of support in the real literacies approach. Theywill be called upon to be creative and innovative,to respond to material they may not have seen ormay not have examined in detail before. It has beenrecognised that better initial training is needed, andnew formats are being introduced in Bangladesh.Training manuals have been developed in WestAfrica and are in course of preparation in Bangla-desh. But on its own, initial training will not beenough. Regular on-going support will be needed.The facilitators, like the participants, will be calledupon to look at their own experiences of literacy,at their own literacy practices, and to learn fromthese. A process of critical reflection on experienceis called for in adult learning, and the facilitators(as in all good adult education) will be learningalongside and from their literacy learners. The RealLiteracies Forum is intended as such a supportgroup for Bangladeshi field workers.

Secondly, however, there is the questionwhether some words in texts which the participantshave chosen will be‘too difficult’ for the learner-participants. The concept of ‘difficult words’ liesbehind this comment. Several post-literacy pro-grammes such as that run by FIVDB, one of themost prominent literacy NGOs in Bangladesh, setout to help adults to learn a certain number of newwords of increasing complexity (Jennings, 1984).The same idea also lies behind the practice of pro-ducing ‘easy reading material’ for adults at differ-ent levels, based on the vocabulary used and thelength of sentences. This concept is taken fromschool where graded readers are common (ERA,1991; UNICEF, 1993). But recent research showsthat even for children, there is no such thing asa uniform level of difficulty in reading material.Children (and adults) are able to cope with readingmaterial according to their experience, not skilllevel. One child will find a book easy becausehe/she knows and understands the backgroundwell; another child in the same class or group willbe unable to decipher the same book becausehe/she does not have experience of its world(Moon, 1993). There is no such thing as a ‘level ofliteracy’, no such thing as ‘difficult’ words whichapplies to all persons. This is a figment of theimagination of educationalists. Words depend onthe context in which they are used and the personsthey are used with. Adults use any words, however‘difficult’ they may be, to achieve a task they wishto complete.

However, much more significant is the commentthat some (perhaps many) of the participants inadult literacy classes cannot find any real liter-acy tasks in their own lives with which they wishto engage.Field studies suggest that this is so.

To examine this in more depth, we need to lookat student motivations. Although this area has notbeen adequately researched, it would appear thatthere are three main motivations for participatingin adult literacy programmes. First, there is thesymbolicmotivation, the desire to join the ‘literate’group, to have the schooling which others have hadand which brings with it a status. “If you are illiter-ate, people stare at you as if you are stupid”, saidone Bangladeshi woman, outlining her reasons forjoining and staying in the literacy class. There is

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no intention here to use the literacy skills; ratherthe aim is to gain increased confidence and self-worth through being able to state that one ‘can readand write’. There are many adults who participatefor this purpose. Secondly, there is theopportunitymotivation. Literacy skills will open the door toother kinds of activity. One literacy participant ina Botswana Game Reserve said that there wasnothing he wanted to read or write in his daily life,but that he attended because he wanted to get adriving licence (Rogers, 1998c). Others want tolearn literacy skills so as to be eligible for a loanrather than to use them daily. For how many per-sons this opportunity motivation is the primarymotivation is not clear. Thirdly, there is theinstru-mentalmotivation—the desire to use literacy skillsto keep their own accounts, to write letters, to readnewspapers or magazines etc. These—and thesealone—plan to use literacy skills regularly. Indi-viduals may attend for one or a mixed group ofthese motivations, and this will influence theirresponse to attempts by the facilitators to help themto use their newly acquired literacy skills in theirdaily lives.

The desire of literacy practitioners to help parti-cipants to transfer their literacy skills into use intheir daily lives then will not always meet theintentions of the literacy participants. Many will beunable to identify situations where they feel anyneed to read anything or to write anything, unableto identify any texts (found or fetched) which theywish to read. This is one of the reasons why exist-ing adult literacy provision is largely ineffective.And it is for this reason that the ‘real literaciesapproach’ can never be a universal approach toimproving the quality of adult literacy pro-grammes. However, some strategies have beendeveloped to help with moving the participants for-ward in this respect. The facilitators can onoccasion serve as a role model, indicating areas intheir lives where literacy activities have enhancedwhat they were doing. On other occasions, dailyactivities which the participants engage in can bediscussed in the class to see whether literacy mightimprove these activities. In one BRAC programmein Bangladesh, for example, the women areembarking on a discussion of different recipes for

cooking, leading (it is hoped) to he writing of theserecipes down (Rogers, 1997).

This issue, that the real literacies approach can-not meet the differing needs of all the differentparticipants, provokes a further question which hasbeen raised by some practitioners. It has beenarguedthat this approach will not lead to devel-opment, to socioeconomic change. Indeed, it isargued, the use (and therefore the validation) ofexisting found texts may even lead to the confir-mation of existing inequalities in the local com-munity.

Two comments may be made here. The first isthat—as the Bangladesh Marriage RegistrationForm example shows—it is possible to engage inreal literacy tasks with an element ofcriticalawareness and discussion. In Jaipur, the film waslooked at with a careful analysis of how genderroles were portrayed in the film. In Ghana, a uni-versal wall notice ‘Don’t urinate here’, which theparticipants saw every day, was taken for learning.None had any difficulty learning to read thesewords. But at the same time, the session led to alively discussion of power within the communityand to some attempts to re-compose the notice indifferent forms (‘Who wrote it? who is it meantfor? why did they use English? why did they usea long word? could it be rewritten in more effectivelanguage? could one devise a sign for those whocould not read? etc.’). In Botswana, the Coca Colaexample led to discussions about cultural invasionand globalisation, some being in favour, someagainst the presence of multi-national companieslike this in the country. To use real literacymaterials decontextualised will not lead to change.To engage in real literacy tasks with critical aware-ness may.

Indeed, it may be argued that real literacymaterials lend themselves to critical analysis muchmore easily and effectively than the sample textschosen by the literacy agency. Each text can bescrutinised and examined critically. Who producedit? who is it aimed at? what is its purpose? why isit in this language and format? Questions of powerarise naturally from this analysis. The contents canbe discussed (for example, how women are por-trayed in the real materials). Examples of materialswhich can be rewritten in more comprehensible

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and inclusive language can easily be found. In onecase, a literacy group using real shop signs forlearning literacy skills was urged to rewrite localshop signs in the local language (Education forDevelopment, 1997b).

This raises an interesting point—whether onecan work with a group of literacy learners to exam-ine the literacy primer with critical awareness.Who wrote it? What words and images areincluded and what are excluded? It will of coursenot be easy to engage in such discussion for manyreasons, but in some contexts this has alreadybegun.

But there is a second point here relating to theencouragement of developmental change throughliteracy classes. The real question is,whose devel-opment is important? whose views will predomi-nate (Education for Development, 1997a). Forexample, in Brazil, a recent evaluation found thatsome of the women participants in a Freirean liter-acy programme were using their new skills forreading fashion magazines and writing Christmascards rather than using these skills for ‘furtherlearning’ which was the goal of the providingagencies (Stromquist, 1997, p. 151). The issue hereis how far reading film or fashion magazines orwriting greetings cards are justified uses of literacyskills, whether they constitute developmentinterms of the participants, even if it is not develop-ment in terms of the providers of literacy pro-grammes. This will always be a moot issue fordevelopment agencies, whose voice counts?(Chambers, 1997; Burkey, 1993).

A further issue ishow far such an approachcan be scaled up into a national literacy pro-gramme. Insofar as a government may wish tohave a uniform programme of study for literacy, itis clear that to help different local communities offisherfolk to deal with the real tasks they are facedwith, quite apart from the tasks which differentgroups of tea pickers or dairy farmers or shoe-makers or domestic workers, or different social andcultural groups will choose for themselves cannotresult in a common learning programme.

The problem is not a simple one. If real literaciesare local, meeting the different aspirations andintentions of different groups, using local realmaterials, how can they be adapted into a national

movement? Is it appropriate to the Indian Total Lit-eracy Campaign or to the Bangladesh Non-FormalEducation programme or to the Egyptian Cam-paign for the Eradication of Illiteracy?

There is today, in many developing countries, agreater willingness to encourage local diversity inlearning programmes. In India, for example, theTotal Literacy Campaign encourages the variousdistricts to develop learning programmes which arerelevant to their own districts (Rogers, 1998a). Inother countries, decentralisation of learning isbeing encouraged. And there are some interestinginitiatives: bottom-up approaches by which localgovernment agencies or NGOs make proposals tonational bodies to meet specific local needs; work-based literacies; assistance to local developmentalgroups such as credit and savings groups orincome-generation groups etc. So that a nationalprogramme can perhaps be built on a wide diver-sity of local initiatives sharing common guidelines.

The major problem about such an approach,however, is the difficulty offinding common mea-sures of achievementto satisfy national govern-ments searching for statistics to convince the inter-national community that they are making progresswith what is seen as ‘the problem of illiteracy’.How can the different advances made by taxi driv-ers and hospital porters and abattoir workers (as inBotswana) in developing their use of literacy skillsin their own contextsbe measured? How can weaddress the question of participants achieving astandardised level of literacy?

This is the issue to which further research isbeing addressed, using ethnographical approachesto evaluation and measurement (Vulliamy, 1990;Powell, 1991; Hill and Parry, 1994; Goyder et al.,1998). The problem may be put as making theimportant (i.e. literacy practices) measurable ratherthan making the measurable (literacy statistics)important. This is the next task for adult literacypractitioners (Charnley and Jones, 1979 have madea start). Without this, the real literacies approach,however sound its basis in adult learning theoryand in the new literacy studies may be, is unlikelyto be adopted by the World Bank, UNESCO orother international agencies or by national govern-ments. In their search for statistics, these bodies

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will remain steadfast to the traditional paradigm,however ineffective that has proved to be.

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