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The employability skills discourse and literacy practitioners
... There is a disconnect between college-based adult literacy and the reality of learners' everyday literacy practices (Appleby, 2010). Changes to basic skills qualification delivery in 2010, with the introduction of Functional Skills (Department for Education, 2012), appear to have moved teaching to a more reductive, narrow delivery based on employability aims (Allatt & Tett, 2021) instead of a broader curriculum, which leads to, in Freirean (1970) terms, a banking system of education and ultimately promotes teaching to the test. Consequently, fewer links are made in reference to adults' own goals or life experiences (Allatt & Tett, 2021). ...
... Changes to basic skills qualification delivery in 2010, with the introduction of Functional Skills (Department for Education, 2012), appear to have moved teaching to a more reductive, narrow delivery based on employability aims (Allatt & Tett, 2021) instead of a broader curriculum, which leads to, in Freirean (1970) terms, a banking system of education and ultimately promotes teaching to the test. Consequently, fewer links are made in reference to adults' own goals or life experiences (Allatt & Tett, 2021). Literature reveals that most adult education policy, both currently and historically, views adults without a certain level of skills as deficit in some way (Jones, 2018). ...
... Literature reveals that most adult education policy, both currently and historically, views adults without a certain level of skills as deficit in some way (Jones, 2018). The policy literature often describes adults in terms of their economic value (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2014), as 'workers', reduced to human capital (Allatt & Tett, 2021), rather than taking a holistic view, even where lifelong learning is supposedly valued (The Centenary Commission on Adult Education, 2019). ...
In this article I consider women’s motivations for adult literacy learning during the academic years 2019/20 and 2020/21, which were affected by English COVID-19 lockdowns. I began my doctoral project in the academic year of 2019/20. My research has therefore been affected by subsequent lockdowns and, in this article, I provide an overview of the project and my overall research approach, including how it has been affected. Using empirical data, I explore adult literacy learners’ self-insights, their perceptions of personal study, and explore how they reflect teachers’ perceptions, including both the adult literacy courses of my institution, and learners’ own motivations for study.
Adult literacy is a commonly used term, but it is often misunderstood as referring mainly to those adults who may be struggling to fully develop their skills. In part, this is a result of policy documents and research that prioritize the role that adults play in the economy and argue for the return on investment in workforce education. A broader view of adult literacy is provided by sociocultural accounts of what adults do with reading and writing in their daily lives, and how their literacy practices are associated with leisure pursuits, self-study and identity formation. Furthermore, the role that literacy plays in community building can take on an explicitly ideological dimension when adult literacy programs are part of larger social justice projects. Understanding adult literacy as a matter of both social practice and political praxis, and not just as a problem to be solved, creates opportunities to take action on a host of complex challenges.
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