Understanding functional illiteracy from a policy, adult education, and cognition point of view: Towards a joint referent framework

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-122
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Bulajić ◽  
Miomir Despotović ◽  
Thomas Lachmann

Abstract. The article discusses the emergence of a functional literacy construct and the rediscovery of illiteracy in industrialized countries during the second half of the 20th century. It offers a short explanation of how the construct evolved over time. In addition, it explores how functional (il)literacy is conceived differently by research discourses of cognitive and neural studies, on the one hand, and by prescriptive and normative international policy documents and adult education, on the other hand. Furthermore, it analyses how literacy skills surveys such as the Level One Study (leo.) or the PIAAC may help to bridge the gap between cognitive and more practical and educational approaches to literacy, the goal being to place the functional illiteracy (FI) construct within its existing scale levels. It also sheds more light on the way in which FI can be perceived in terms of different cognitive processes and underlying components of reading. By building on the previous work of other authors and previous definitions, the article brings together different views of FI and offers a perspective for a needed operational definition of the concept, which would be an appropriate reference point for future educational, political, and scientific utilization.

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-107
Author(s):  
Melanie Boltzmann ◽  
Thomas Münte ◽  
Bahram Mohammadi ◽  
Jascha Rüsseler

Abstract. In Germany, 7.5 Million individuals between 18 and 64 years are considered to be functionally illiterate (Grotlüschen & Riekmann, 2012). Functional illiterates have only rudimentary literacy skills despite attending school for several years. Although they can use written language to a very limited extent, only few functional illiterates attend literacy courses for adults. In addition, most adult literacy courses primarily aim at promoting basic reading and writing skills. Offers specific to workplace literacy are scarce. This review gives an overview of the definition of functional illiteracy. Afterwards, a specific literacy program (AlphaPlus) and its effectiveness will be presented. The reviewed studies indicate that learning to read in adulthood is associated with structural and functional brain changes.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauro Giovanni Carta ◽  
Antonio Preti

Adjustment disorder is a condition of subjective emotional distress triggered as a consequence of a meaningful change in life. The diagnosis of adjustment disorder is hindered by the difficult operational definition of stress and of its related concept of “vulnerability,” by the problem of disentangling symptoms of adjustment disorder from those attributable to comorbid anxiety and mood disorders, and by the poor boundaries of the disorder with other stress-related conditions on the one hand and with common adaptation to life events on the other. Despite the high frequency of its diagnosis in clinical settings, there has been relatively little research on the adjustment disorder and, consequently, very few hints about its treatments. Several psychotherapies have been developed to deal with patients diagnosed with adjustment disorder, with inconclusive evidence on their effectiveness. Antidepressants may abate the symptoms and help patients reacquire occupational and social functioning. The medium-term outcome of adjustment disorder is good, with 70 to 80% of those diagnosed with it showing no evidence of psychopathology when reassessed 5 years from the episode. However, when comorbid with a personality disorder or a substance use disorder, the short-term risk of suicide may be increased. The long-term outcome of adjustment disorder seems to be worse in children and adolescents than in adults. In particular, adolescents diagnosed with adjustment disorder were more likely than adults to have received a diagnosis of a severe mental disorder at the 5-year follow-up, including schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar disorder. This review contains 1 figure, 6 tables, and 52 references. Key words: adaptation, adjustment disorder, anxiety, depression, stress, trauma, treatment, vulnerability


2019 ◽  
Vol 91 ◽  
pp. 08071 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uliana Filatova ◽  
Nina Semeryanova ◽  
Svetlana Suslova ◽  
Alena Gabudina ◽  
Anna Kopytova

The article discusses the main issues of definition of social entrepreneurship, both from economic and legal point of view. Since Russian legislature is only at the beginning of the way to create legal framework for activities, legislation on social entrepreneurship seems fragmentary and inconsistent. All of that adversely affects development of social entrepreneurship. Official city statistics (Nizhnevartovsk) show that less than a third of all entrepreneurs are interested in this type of activity; entrepreneurs who already have business in the field of social entrepreneurship mostly do not plan to expand current activities in this area. Analysis can contribute to creation of developed socio-economic relations in Russia. It can be achieved by building effective relations between social entrepreneurs and beneficiaries on the one hand, and also between social entrepreneurs and the state on the other.


2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimi Akita,

AbstractThis article presents empirical evidence of the high referential specificity of sound-symbolic words, based on a FrameNet-aided analysis of collocational data of Japanese mimetics. The definition of mimetics, particularly their semantic definition, has been crosslinguistically the most challenging problem in the literature, and different researchers have used different adjectives (most notably, “vivid,” since Doke 1935) to describe their semantic peculiarity. The present study approaches this longstanding issue from a frame-semantic point of view combined with a quantitative method. It was found that mimetic manner adverbials generally form a frame-semantically restricted range of verbal/nominal collocations than non-mimetic ones. Each mimetic can thus be considered to evoke a highly specific frame, which elaborates the general frame evoked by its typical host predicate and contains a highly limited set of frame elements, which correlate and constrain one another. This conclusion serves as a unified account of previously reported phenomena concerning mimetics, including the lack of hyponymy, the one-mimetic-per-clause restriction, and unparaphrasability. This study can be also viewed as a methodological proposal for the measurement of frame specificity, which supplements bottom-up linguistic tests.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 527-546
Author(s):  
Olga V Pankova

The article reveals the essential characteristics of justice as a specific type of state activity; identifies the main features of justice that distinguish it, on the one hand, from other types of state activity, and on the other - from other types of judicial activity. The purpose of this article is to identify and analyze the features of justice in its modern sense. The versatility of this legal category as an ambivalent definition is reflected in its various characteristics, through the consideration of which the most general definition of justice is formulated in the work. The methodological basis of the article is the modern achievements of the theory of knowledge. In the course of research theoretical, General philosophical (dialectics, system method, analysis, synthesis, deduction), traditional legal methods (formal-logical) were applied. Turning to the question of the characteristics of justice, the author touches upon the problem of its broad and narrow understanding due to the increasing role of mediation, conciliation and arbitration as alternative forms of resolution of legal conflicts, as well as in connection with the empowerment of certain state bodies of jurisdictional powers, and concludes that, unlike a number of foreign countries, justice in Russia can be carried out only by state courts. Of considerable interest is also the study of the subject area of justice, which is related to the situation of legal conflict. In this context, the author's analysis of the concept of "legal conflict" and his proposed differentiation of such conflicts into types with subsequent consideration of each of them is quite legitimate. In the context of the formation of the new Russian statehood, the arbitration sign of justice acquired a different sound, which is considered in the work from the standpoint of the special jurisdictional procedural activity of the court and the situational nature of justice. Since the beginning of the modern judicial reform, objective changes in the activities of the courts associated with the emergence of simplified and writ proceedings that have simplified the procedure for the consideration and resolution of certain categories of administrative and civil cases, as well as the allocation of jurisdictional powers to other state bodies that are not part of the judiciary, but use quasi-judicial procedures, i.e. almost judicial procedures as close as possible to them, have significantly changed the attitude to the procedural form of justice, which has lost its former importance. In this regard, the author substantiates the point of view that nowadays in order to determine the qualitative nature of the jurisdictional bodies, it is necessary to identify, in particular, the distinctive features in each of the procedural forms. Revealing in more detail the content of methods and means of justice, the author touches upon the problem of correlation of this legal category with justice and on the basis of the analysis of different points of view comes to the conclusion that these concepts can not be considered as legal phenomena that coincide in whole or in part. Justice is rather an intrinsic property of justice, contributing to its perception as a social and legal value. As one of the most important signs of justice in the work is considered the state-power nature and reliability of judicial decisions, the execution of which involves the suppression of the will (freedom) or material deprivation of one of the parties with the use in certain cases of power and force of the state. In this regard, some attention is paid to the characterization of the binding nature of the judgment as one of its essential properties. Examining justice as categories which help to reveal the contents and legal merits of this form of state activity, in the definition of the given concept into a single, unified definition.


Author(s):  
E.A. Zhdanova

The article is devoted to the analysis of semantic features that are noted in the verb жить in Russian dialects of Udmurtia. As the analysis of the material of the corpus of Russian dialects of Udmurtia showed, this verb is found in contexts indicating values different from those known in the literary language. In connection with the need to clarify the layout of the corpus and create a dictionary of Russian dialects in Udmurtia, a definition of the semantics of this verb is required. The semantic features of a dialect word can be established both by linguistic factors: the syntactic role and lexical compatibility, as well as extralinguistic factors: the range of specific uses of the verb, historical information about the settlement of this territory, religious and ideological features of dialect speakers. For analysis, material from various lexicographic sources, as well as etymological information, was used. As a result of the study, an idea about the possibility of double interpretation of the semantics of the analyzed dialect word was formed: on the one hand, from the point of view of its implementation in dialect, as a syncretic unit, on the other hand, from the point of view of its lexicographic representation, as a set of lexical-semantic variants.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Hartmann ◽  
Tobias Ungerer

The concept of ‘snowclones’ has gained interest in recent research on linguistic creativity and in studies on extravagance and expressiveness in language. However, no clear criteria for identifying snowclones have yet been established, and detailed corpus-based investigations of the phenomenon are still lacking. This paper addresses this research gap in a twofold way: On the one hand, we develop an operational definition of snowclones, arguing that three criteria are decisive: (i) the existence of a lexically fixed source construction; (ii) partial productivity; (iii) “extravagant" formal and/or functional characteristics. On the other hand, we offer an empirical investigation of two snowclones that can be considered ‘prototypical’ on the basis of previous literature, namely [the mother of all X] and [X BE the newY]. We use collostructional analysis and distributional semantics to explore the partial productivity of both patterns’ slot fillers. In sum, we argue that the concept of snowclones, if properly defined, can contribute substantially to our understanding of creative language use, especially regarding the question of how social,cultural, and interpersonal factors influence the choice of more or less salient linguistic constructions.


Author(s):  
A. B. Bosshof ◽  
M. De V Visser

An operational definition of the concept of conflict is given and the implications of the definition discussed. The course of a conflict and the processes involved are described. An effort is made to show that the typical sequence of events in a conflict can be used to explain the (postulated) bad relationship between the motorist on the one hand and the traffic officer on the other hand. The negative effects of residual elements of unsatisfactorily resolved conflict situations between the two groups are emphasized. It is suggested that industrial psychologists have a role to play in the long-term solution of the negative relationship. Opsomming 'n Operasionele definisie van die begrip konflik word gegee en die implikasies daarvan bespreek. Die verloop van 'n konflik en die prosesse betrokke, word beskrywe. 'n Poging word aangewend om aan te toon dat die tipiese verloop van 'n konflik gebruik kan word om die (gepostuleerde) swak verhouding tussen motoriste aan die een kant en die verkeersbeamptes aan die ander kant te verklaar. Die negatiewe uitwerking van residuele effekte van onbevredigend opgeloste konfliksituasies tussen die twee groepe persone word beklemtoon. Daar word aan die hand gedoen dat bedryfsielkundiges 'n rol speel in die langtermynoplossing van die negatiewe verhouding.


Author(s):  
Isaak Deman

Abstract Hans Joas (born 1948) has repeatedly criticized Peter L. Berger (1929–2017) for placing religious experiences in the cognitive realm, where it runs the risk of being “contaminated” by secularization and pluralism. Instead, Joas has proposed to locate religious experiences in the “deeper layers” of the human person, where it is protected against mere cognitive reductionism and against contamination by secularization and pluralism. Despite his critique, Joas follows a similar path of Berger, as he explains the phenomenon of religion from an inductive point of view that originates in the experiential realm. This article demonstrates how Joas’ approach operates on a similar methodology like the one of Berger and ultimately results in similar theoretical conclusions despite their differing theoretical foundations. Moreover, this article illuminates an implicit methodological similarity between Joas and Berger that, on the one hand, differs from one of the taken-for-granted methodologies in the discipline of sociology (of religion), and, on the other hand, strongly influences the disposition of religious institutions in their definition of religion.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauro Giovanni Carta ◽  
Antonio Preti

Adjustment disorder is a condition of subjective emotional distress triggered as a consequence of a meaningful change in life. The diagnosis of adjustment disorder is hindered by the difficult operational definition of stress and of its related concept of “vulnerability,” by the problem of disentangling symptoms of adjustment disorder from those attributable to comorbid anxiety and mood disorders, and by the poor boundaries of the disorder with other stress-related conditions on the one hand and with common adaptation to life events on the other. Despite the high frequency of its diagnosis in clinical settings, there has been relatively little research on the adjustment disorder and, consequently, very few hints about its treatments. Several psychotherapies have been developed to deal with patients diagnosed with adjustment disorder, with inconclusive evidence on their effectiveness. Antidepressants may abate the symptoms and help patients reacquire occupational and social functioning. The medium-term outcome of adjustment disorder is good, with 70 to 80% of those diagnosed with it showing no evidence of psychopathology when reassessed 5 years from the episode. However, when comorbid with a personality disorder or a substance use disorder, the short-term risk of suicide may be increased. The long-term outcome of adjustment disorder seems to be worse in children and adolescents than in adults. In particular, adolescents diagnosed with adjustment disorder were more likely than adults to have received a diagnosis of a severe mental disorder at the 5-year follow-up, including schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar disorder. This review contains 1 figure, 6 tables, and 52 references. Key words: adaptation, adjustment disorder, anxiety, depression, stress, trauma, treatment, vulnerability


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