The Global Diffusion of Adult Basic Education

Adult Basic Education is an essential tool of social policy. It aims at tackling unemployment, integrating marginalized groups, fostering development, etc. Despite the rising importance and attention to lifelong learning, past research barely investigated ABE as a specific (social) policy field. Mostly, this is due to the lack of systematic data and a focus on formal schooling. This chapter investigates which determinants are most influential on the adoption of policies concerning the basic education of adults. The contribution, thereby, adds to the understanding of diffusion processes of policies on widening the right to education for previously marginalized groups of people.

Interconnectedness of Adult Basic Education, Community-Based Participatory Research, and Transformative Learning

This article argues for the beneficial interconnectedness of adult basic education as an educational practice, community-based participatory research as a methodological approach, and the framework of transformative learning, for exploring and theorizing about adult learning and education. It is elaborated that these three approaches are connected by shared core values that counter the dominant economistic discourse on adult basic education. A community-based participatory research project, comprising researchers with an adult basic education learners’ background, adult basic education practitioners, and the two authors as university-based researchers, serves as a local empirical example. Selected data from the research process illustrate how these three approaches complement each other and can show their inherent potential. Together, these three approaches establish a democratic space of learning and thus act as a resource of hope for education and research aimed at (self-) empowerment, emancipation, participation, and collective action toward humanization, democratization, and social justice.

What difference does literacy make among adult learners? Impact of adult basic education programme in a rural community in Botswana

Functional education and human development are not mutually exclusive. To achieve an all-round development, the fourth Sustainable Development Goal partly emphasizes the need to ‘… promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’ by year 2030. This article, therefore, uses a case study approach to analyse the impact of a government funded adult basic education programme in improving literacy level of Sehithwa community in rural, northwestern Botswana. Using a snowball technique and questionnaire/interview schedule survey to sample and interview 30 adult basic education programme participants and 30 non-participants, respectively, and holding other factors constant, the article’s main thrust was to determine the difference in literacy attainment between the two groups. Results from the T-test analysis performed showed that there was a significant difference in participants’ and non-participants’ age, association membership, and household size at p ≤ 0.00 level. Nonetheless, there was no significant difference in literacy attainment between the two groups, perhaps as a result of lack of effectiveness and other challenges associated with the implementation of the literacy programme in the study area.

Return on Investment for Adult Basic Education: Existing Evidence and Future Directions

Amidst diminishing federal investment in Adult Basic Education (ABE), there is growing interest in return on investment (ROI) as an economic rationale to support ABE funding. Against this backdrop, we provide an overview of the ROI concept and methods and the empirical evidence on ABE program impacts to broaden the discourse among practitioners and advocates. We point out that the most crucial building blocks necessary for ROI estimations are missing in the literature. We contextualize the current status of the literature by discussing challenges in ABE program evaluations and limitations in ROI methods. We then further our discussions by offering a recommendation for ROI estimation and alternative approaches to ROI. We conclude by calling for an expanded public discourse, beyond ROI, on the social benefits of funding ABE.

An Exploration of the Deterrents to Adult Basic Education Among Blue Collar Workers

This phenomenological study explored how blue collar workers employed in a north Mississippi manufacturing facility described their reasons for not participating in adult basic education (ABE) when nonparticipation would result in termination. The structure of the ABE classes was designed to reduce the costs and time constraints to participation. A group of 8 respondents constituted the sample from a population of 23 nonparticipating workers and maximal variation sampling was used to increase gender, race, and age diversity within the sample. Three major themes emerged as deterrents to participation: (a) Test of Adult Basic Education and ABE classes were not perceived as relevant, (b) fear of embarrassment, and (c) low self-efficacy (i.e., a self-perceived lack of capability to perform successfully). However, lack of relevancy and fear of embarrassment were found to be used as reasons for nonparticipation when low self-efficacy in learning new material, reading, and math problem solving were present.

Accountability in Adult Basic Education: The Marginalization of Adults with Difficulty Reading

Federal accountability policies requiring rapid, measurable outcomes have increasingly shaped the nature and type of public literacy services available to adults. However, little empirical research has explored the impact of accountability policies on program practice in adult basic education, and almost no research has focused on the effect on services for adults who have difficulty reading. This ethnographically grounded research article explores one publicly funded adult basic education program’s efforts to comply with federal accountability policy and the impact these efforts had on services for adults with difficulty reading. Findings suggest that efforts to comply with accountability policies resulted in instructional practices that limited students’ opportunities for substantive engagement with reading and in program policies that excluded students who did not produce outcomes from participation. The findings also suggest that in the context of accountability pressures, student marginalization became normalized as an ordinary part of practice.

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words: The Use of Pictures to Promote Literacy and Reading in Foundation Phase and ABET-Level 1 Learners

Since time immemorial, pictorial images have been used to illustrate, document, map, narrate, and facilitate textual and verbal information. The facilitation and illustration of texts through pictorial support have an added advantage in the sense that it stimulates both spheres of the human brain, thus making lasting effects on the impression of cognitive understanding of the content read and boosting reading comprehension. These positive effects and benefits are observed in storybooks with illustrations that present an aesthetic appeal and typographic interplay to the reader. In recent years, texts and stories have been conveyed and disseminated through visual compositions, creative outputs and visual narrations that are presently enhanced by digital technology. This is a conceptual paper that is conducted from a constructivist point of view, reviewing literature on photo elicitation where pictures are used as aids to facilitate comprehension in textual readings. It is argued that the eradication of illiteracy through reading is a less intuitive and rather complex process that requires the reader to read the text at hand with good comprehension and understanding. The study concludes that pictorial images are worth being part of the typography of texts because they create the necessary visual appeal and support the reading process, especially for foundation phase and adult basic education and training (ABET) level 1 learners.