The purpose of this study is to examine adult literacy beyond its constraints as a social problem and instead consider the implications of illiteracy as a particular form of lived experience, analogous to women's oppression at large. Through a complex system of meaning making, the knowledge accrued by illiterate adults is qualitatively different, and examining these differences in terms of their correlation to coping mechanisms developed in the face of social alienation and diminished professional prospects yields a greater understanding of class privilege and how nontraditional learners fit into a larger social structure. From the perspective of academic feminism, adult illiteracy presents several problems regarding the scope of an inclusive feminist community that acknowledges privilege and difference. The primary method through which information regarding feminism is conferred is printed materials, which utilize highly specific, specialized jargon, and unwittingly create an exclusive community marred by internalized racism and class stratifications. This study explores other methods through which feminist ideation might theoretically be possible, i.e. cultural "reading" communities and vocational and continuing education programs focused on cultural competencies, as women come out of their imposed silences and become aware of their circumstances in a way that resembles feminist thought, if perhaps without sophisticated language with which to communicate those ideals. In this way, feminist ideation and semiotics tie in together, as attitudinal change may occur without the semantic realization of what this entails. This goal of this paper is also, in part, to justify why acknowledging gendered learning differences and a particular female subjectivity for adult literacy clients will yield better results for their self-valuation, as gender is a component of diversity all but ignored within the scheme of adult literacy pedagogical theory.

No description available.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-03T16:15:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 VeronicaSantos2.pdf: 1293214 bytes, checksum: fa9ac4ee0ad76b48820e886541fe8fcc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-04-27 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This research attempts to locate the different aspects of pioneer history of municipal public policies, in Diadema (SP), for the education of youth and adults (EJA), specifically in the program for literacy. It updates the program characteristics and focus on the final report of ethnographic qualitative research profile of the youth education and adult service student, conducted between 1993 and 1995, an important service evaluation assessment. It proposes an update based on results presented in that research, using them to confront the development of youth and adult education policies in the city with the latest policies in ABCDMRR (Santo André, São Bernardo do Campo, São Caetano do Sul, Diadema, Mauá, Ribeirão Pires and Rio Grande da Serra) Region, in São Paulo State and Brazil, for this population segment. It searches revitalized measurements and qualitative assessments also gathered by that research to write this thesis. / Esta pesquisa localiza os diferentes aspectos na trajetória pioneira das políticas públicas municipais, em Diadema (SP), para a educação de jovens e adultos (EJA), especificamente no programa para alfabetização. Atualiza as características do programa e aborda o - Relatório Final da Pesquisa Qualitativa Etnográfica Perfil do Aluno do Serviço de Educação de Jovens e Adultos -, conduzida entre 1993 e 1995, importante avaliação do serviço. Propõe uma atualização baseada em resultados apresentados naquela pesquisa, utilizando-os para confrontar o desenvolvimento das políticas de educação de jovens e adultos no município e nas mais recentes políticas na Região do ABCDMRR (Santo André, São Bernardo do Campo, São Caetano do Sul, Diadema, Mauá, Ribeirão Pires e Rio Grande da Serra), no estado de São Paulo e no Brasil, para esse segmento populacional. Também procura reatualizar as mensurações e avaliações qualitativas angariadas naquela pesquisa para compor esta dissertação de mestrado.

<p>This thesis is a collection of five independent but closely related studies. The overall purpose is to approach the analysis of learning outcomes from a perspective that combines three major elements, namely lifelonglifewide learning, human capital, and the benefits of learning. The approach is based on an interdisciplinary perspective of the human capital paradigm. It considers the multiple learning contexts that are responsible for the development of embodied potential – including formal, nonformal and informal learning – and the multiple outcomes – including knowledge, skills, economic, social and others– that result from learning. The studies also seek to examine the extent and relative influence of learning in different contexts on the formation of embodied potential and how in turn that affects economic and social well being. The first study combines the three major elements, lifelonglifewide</p><p>learning, human capital, and the benefits of learning into one common conceptual framework. This study forms a common basis for the four empirical studies that follow. All four empirical studies use data from the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) to investigate the relationships among the major elements of the conceptual framework presented in the first study.</p><p><u>Study I. A conceptual framework for the analysis of learning outcomes</u></p><p>This study brings together some key concepts and theories that are relevant for the analysis of learning outcomes. Many of the concepts and theories have emerged from varied disciplines including economics, educational psychology, cognitive science and sociology, to name only a few. Accordingly, some of the research questions inherent in the framework relate to different disciplinary perspectives. The primary purpose is to create a common basis for formulating and testing hypotheses as well as to interpret the findings in the empirical studies that follow. In particular, the framework facilitates the process of theorizing and hypothesizing on the relationships and processes concerning lifelong learning as well as their antecedents and consequences.</p><p><u>Study II. Determinants of literacy proficiency: A lifelong-lifewide learning perspective</u></p><p>This study investigates lifelong and lifewide processes of skill formation. In particular, it seeks to estimate the substitutability and complementarity effects of learning in multiple settings over the lifespan on literacy skill formation. This is done by investigating the predictive capacity of major determinants of literacy proficiency that are associated with a variety of learning contexts including school, home, work, community and leisure. An identical structural model based on previous research is fitted to the IALS data for 18 countries. The results show that even after accounting for all factors, education remains the most important predictor of literacy proficiency. In all countries, however, the total effect of education is significantly mediated through further learning occurring at work, at home and in the community. Therefore, the job and other literacy related factors complement education in predicting literacy proficiency. This result points to a virtual cycle of lifelong learning, particularly to how educational attainment influences other learning behaviours throughout life. In addition, results show that home background as measured by parents’ education is also a strong predictor of literacy proficiency, but in many countries this occurs only if a favourable home background is complemented with some post-secondary education.</p><p><u>Study III. The effect of literacy proficiency on earnings: An aggregated occupational approach using the Canadian IALS data</u></p><p>This study uses data from the Canadian Adult Literacy Survey to estimate the earnings return to literacy skills. The approach adapts a labour segmented view of the labour market by aggregating occupations into seven types, enabling the estimation of the variable impact of literacy proficiency on earnings, both within and between different types of occupations. This is done using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). The method used to construct the aggregated occupational classification is based on analysis that considers the role of cognitive and other skills in relation to the nature of occupational tasks. Substantial premiums are found to be associated with some occupational types even after adjusting for within occupational differences in individual characteristics such as schooling, literacy proficiency, labour force experience and gender. Average years of schooling and average levels of literacy proficiency at the between level account for over two-thirds of the premiums. Within occupations, there are significant returns to schooling but they vary depending on the type of occupations. In contrast, the within occupational return of literacy proficiency is not necessarily significant. The latter depends on the type of occupation.</p><p><u>Study IV: Determinants of economic and social outcomes from a lifewide learning perspective in Canada</u></p><p>In this study the relationship between learning in different contexts, which span the lifewide learning dimension, and individual earnings on the one hand and community participation on the other are examined in separate but comparable models. Data from the Canadian Adult Literacy Survey are used to estimate structural models, which correspond closely to the common conceptual framework outlined in Study I. The findings suggest that the relationship between formal education and economic and social outcomes is complex with confounding effects. The results indicate that learning occurring in different contexts and for different reasons leads to different kinds of benefits. The latter finding suggests a potential trade-off between realizing economic and social benefits through learning that are taken for either job-related or personal-interest related reasons.</p><p><u>Study V: The effects of learning on economic and social well being: A comparative analysis</u></p><p>Using the same structural model as in Study IV, hypotheses are comparatively examined using the International Adult Literacy Survey data for Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The main finding from Study IV is confirmed for an additional five countries, namely that the effect of initial schooling on well being is more complex than a direct one and it is significantly mediated by subsequent learning. Additionally, findings suggest that people who devote more time to learning for job-related reasons than learning for personal-interest related reasons experience higher levels of economic well being. Moreover, devoting too much time to learning for personal-interest related reasons has a negative effect on earnings except in Denmark. But the more time people devote to learning for personal-interest related reasons tends to contribute to higher levels of social well being. These results again suggest a trade-off in learning for different reasons and in different contexts.</p>

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2016-11-21T13:05:52Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Kelly Ludkiewicz Alves.pdf: 1420196 bytes, checksum: cd9eda48104a0df40267db9b9fa91145 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-11-21T13:05:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Kelly Ludkiewicz Alves.pdf: 1420196 bytes, checksum: cd9eda48104a0df40267db9b9fa91145 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-09-30 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / In this research we analyze the history of radio schools from the Movement for Education of the Base (MEB) in the state of Pernambuco, from 1961 to1966, stem from the participation of the monitors and the students. We part from the hypothesis that monitors and students built experiences able to transform radio school in a learning, production and culture circulation space, parting from the dynamics of these schools own functioning and, at the same time, make visual the expectations regarding literacy and manifest the limits to its realization. The sources used in this research are, mainly, letters written by the monitors and the students and that were sent to local teams of MEB in Pernambuco. We also used as sources: radio programming script, monitors’ training reports, coordinators’ meeting reports and training texts. We parted from the cultural history referential to identify the elements that made part of the monitors’ and students’ experience in radio school. We also worked with the history of written culture in order to present the letters as a result of a needed writing produced by the peasants, in which they expressed their culture and memory. In our analysis we identified the experiences from which MEB could affirm its pedagogical speech and how this gave sense to the monitors’ work in radio school. The schooling demand between the population attended by MEB and the strategies mobilized by students and monitors so that radio school could work enabled students’ access to alphabetization, culture circulation through radio and the training of a clerks community around the epistolary exchange / Na presente pesquisa analisamos a história das escolas radiofônicas do Movimento de Educação de Base (MEB) no Estado de Pernambuco durante os anos de 1961 a 1966, através da participação dos monitores e dos alunos. Partimos da hipótese de que monitores e alunos construíram experiências capazes de transformar a escola radiofônica num espaço de aprendizagem, produção e circulação da cultura popular pela dinâmica própria de funcionamento dessas escolas e, através das suas cartas, ao deram visibilidade às suas próprias expectativas em relação à alfabetização e aos limites da sua a realização. As fontes que utilizamos na pesquisa são principalmente cartas escritas por monitores e alunos enviadas às equipes locais do MEB em Pernambuco. Também usamos como fontes: textos de formação, roteiros da programação radiofônica, relatórios de treinamento pedagógico e de encontros de coordenadores. Partimos do referencial da história cultural para identificar os elementos que constituíram a experiência nas escolas radiofônicas e trabalhamos com seus parâmetros de análise da cultura escrita para apresentar as cartas como fruto de uma escrita necessária produzida pelos camponeses, nas quais expressaram sua cultura e sua memória. Em nossa análise, identificamos as experiências a partir das quais o MEB afirmou seu discurso pedagógico e conferiu sentido ao trabalho dos monitores nas escolas radiofônicas. A demanda por escolarização entre a população atendida e as estratégias mobilizadas para que as escolas radiofônicas pudessem funcionar possibilitaram o acesso dos alunos à alfabetização, à circulação da cultura popular pelo rádio e à formação de uma comunidade de escreventes em torno do intercambio epistolar

The field of adult literacy and basic education (ALBE) has undergone dramatic changes in recent years with the advent of labour market programs, accreditation, competency-based assessment and competitive tendering for program funds. Teachers' working conditions have deteriorated and their professional autonomy has been eroded. ALBE has been increasingly instrumentalised to fulfil the requirements of a marketised economy and conform to its norms. The beliefs and value systems which traditionally underpinned the work of ALBE teachers have been reframed according to the principle of 'performativity' and the demands of the 'performative State' (Lyotard, 1984: 46, Yeatman 1994: 110). The destabilisation of teachers' working lives can be understood as a manifestation of the 'postmodern condition' (Lyotard 1984; Harvey 1989): the collapse of the certainties and purposes of the past; the proliferation of technologies; the impermanence and intensification of work; the commodification of knowledge and curricula; and the dissolving of boundaries between disciplines and fields of knowledge. The critiques of the modernist grand narratives which underpin progressivist and critical approaches to adult literacy pedagogy have further undermined the traditional points of reference of ALBE teachers. In this thesis I examine how teachers are teaching, surviving, resisting, and 'living the contradictions' (Seddon 1994) in the context of struggles to comply with and resist the requirements of performativity. Following Foucault and a number of feminist poststructuralist authors, I have applied the notions of 'discursive engagement' and 'the politics of discourse' (Yeatman 1990a) as a way of theorising the interplay between imposed change and teachers' practice. I explore the discursive practices which take place at the interface between the 'new' policy discourses and older, naturalised discourses; how teachers are engaged by and are engaging with discourses of performativity; how teachers are discursively constructing adult literacy pedagogy; what new, hybrid discourses of 'good practice' are emerging; and the micropractices of resistance which teachers are enacting in their speech and in their practice. My purpose was to develop knowledge which would support the reflexivity of teachers; to enrich the theoretical languages that teachers could draw upon in trying to make sense of their situation; and to use those languages in speaking about the dilemmas of practice. I used participatory action research as a means of producing knowledge about teachers' practices, structured around their agency, and reflecting their standpoint (Harding 1993). I describe two separate action research projects in which teachers of ALBE participated. I reflect on both projects in the light of poststructuralist theory and consider them as instances of what Lather calls 'within/against research' (Lather 1989: 27). I analyse written and spoken texts produced in both projects which reflect teachers' responses to competency-based assessment and other features of the changing context. I use a method of discourse mapping to describe the discursive field and the teachers' discursive practices. Three main configurations of discourse are delineated: 'progressivism', 'professional teacher' and 'performativity'. The teachers mainly position themselves within a hybridising 'progressivist /professional teacher' discourse, as a discourse of resistance to 'performative' discourse. In adapting their pedagogies, the teachers are in some degree taking the language and world view of performativity into their own vocabularies and practices. The discursive picture I have mapped is complex and contradictory. On one hand, the 'progressivist /professional teacher' discourse appears to endure and to take strength from the articulation into it of elements of performative discourse, creating new possibilities for discursive transformation. On the other hand, there are signs that performative discourse is colonising and subsuming progressivist /professional teacher discourse. At times, both of these tendencies are apparent in the one text. Six micropractices of resistance are identified within the texts: 'rational critique', 'objectification', 'subversion', 'refusal', 'humour' and 'the affirmation of desire'. These reflect the teachers' agency in making discursive choices on the micro level of their every day practices. Through those micropractices, the teachers are engaging with and resisting the micropractices and meanings of performativity. I apply the same multi-layered method of analysis to an examination of discursive engagement in pedagogy by analysing a transcript of the teachers' discussion of critical incidents in their classrooms. Their classroom pedagogies are revealed as complex, situated and eclectic. They are combining and integrating their 'embodied' and their 'institutional' powers, both 'seducing' (McWilliam 1995) and 'regulating' (Gore 1993) as they teach. A strong ethical project is apparent in the teachers' sense of social responsibility, in their determination to adhere to valued traditions of previous times, and in their critical self-awareness of the ways in which they use their institutional and embodied powers in the classroom. Finally, l look back on the findings, and reflect on the possibilities of discursive engagement and the politics of discourse as a framework for more strategic practice in the current context. This research provides grounds for hope that, by becoming more self-conscious about how we engage discursively, we might become more strategic in our everyday professional practice. Not withstanding the constraints (evident in this study) which limit the strategic potential of the politics of discourse, there is space for teachers to become more reflexive in their professional, pedagogical and political praxis. Development of more deliberate, self-reflexive praxis might lead to a 'postmodern democratic polities' (Yeatman 1994: 112) which would challenge the performative state and the system of globalised capital which it serves. Short abstract Adult literacy and basic education (ALBE) teachers have experienced a period of dramatic policy change in recent years; in particular, the introduction of competency-based assessment and competitive tendering for program funds. 'Discourse politics' provides a way of theorising the interplay between policy-mediated institutional change and teachers' practice. The focus of this study is 'discursive engagement'; how teachers are engaged by and are engaging with discourses of performativity. Through two action research projects, texts were generated of teachers talking and writing about how they were responding to the challenges, and developing their pedagogies in the new policy environment. These texts have been analysed and several patterns of discursive engagement delineated, named and illustrated. The strategic potential of 'discourse polities' is explored in the light of the findings.

This thesis is a collection of five independent but closely related studies. The overall purpose is to approach the analysis of learning outcomes from a perspective that combines three major elements, namely lifelonglifewide learning, human capital, and the benefits of learning. The approach is based on an interdisciplinary perspective of the human capital paradigm. It considers the multiple learning contexts that are responsible for the development of embodied potential – including formal, nonformal and informal learning – and the multiple outcomes – including knowledge, skills, economic, social and others– that result from learning. The studies also seek to examine the extent and relative influence of learning in different contexts on the formation of embodied potential and how in turn that affects economic and social well being. The first study combines the three major elements, lifelonglifewide learning, human capital, and the benefits of learning into one common conceptual framework. This study forms a common basis for the four empirical studies that follow. All four empirical studies use data from the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) to investigate the relationships among the major elements of the conceptual framework presented in the first study. <u>Study I. A conceptual framework for the analysis of learning outcomes</u> This study brings together some key concepts and theories that are relevant for the analysis of learning outcomes. Many of the concepts and theories have emerged from varied disciplines including economics, educational psychology, cognitive science and sociology, to name only a few. Accordingly, some of the research questions inherent in the framework relate to different disciplinary perspectives. The primary purpose is to create a common basis for formulating and testing hypotheses as well as to interpret the findings in the empirical studies that follow. In particular, the framework facilitates the process of theorizing and hypothesizing on the relationships and processes concerning lifelong learning as well as their antecedents and consequences. <u>Study II. Determinants of literacy proficiency: A lifelong-lifewide learning perspective</u> This study investigates lifelong and lifewide processes of skill formation. In particular, it seeks to estimate the substitutability and complementarity effects of learning in multiple settings over the lifespan on literacy skill formation. This is done by investigating the predictive capacity of major determinants of literacy proficiency that are associated with a variety of learning contexts including school, home, work, community and leisure. An identical structural model based on previous research is fitted to the IALS data for 18 countries. The results show that even after accounting for all factors, education remains the most important predictor of literacy proficiency. In all countries, however, the total effect of education is significantly mediated through further learning occurring at work, at home and in the community. Therefore, the job and other literacy related factors complement education in predicting literacy proficiency. This result points to a virtual cycle of lifelong learning, particularly to how educational attainment influences other learning behaviours throughout life. In addition, results show that home background as measured by parents’ education is also a strong predictor of literacy proficiency, but in many countries this occurs only if a favourable home background is complemented with some post-secondary education. <u>Study III. The effect of literacy proficiency on earnings: An aggregated occupational approach using the Canadian IALS data</u> This study uses data from the Canadian Adult Literacy Survey to estimate the earnings return to literacy skills. The approach adapts a labour segmented view of the labour market by aggregating occupations into seven types, enabling the estimation of the variable impact of literacy proficiency on earnings, both within and between different types of occupations. This is done using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). The method used to construct the aggregated occupational classification is based on analysis that considers the role of cognitive and other skills in relation to the nature of occupational tasks. Substantial premiums are found to be associated with some occupational types even after adjusting for within occupational differences in individual characteristics such as schooling, literacy proficiency, labour force experience and gender. Average years of schooling and average levels of literacy proficiency at the between level account for over two-thirds of the premiums. Within occupations, there are significant returns to schooling but they vary depending on the type of occupations. In contrast, the within occupational return of literacy proficiency is not necessarily significant. The latter depends on the type of occupation. <u>Study IV: Determinants of economic and social outcomes from a lifewide learning perspective in Canada</u> In this study the relationship between learning in different contexts, which span the lifewide learning dimension, and individual earnings on the one hand and community participation on the other are examined in separate but comparable models. Data from the Canadian Adult Literacy Survey are used to estimate structural models, which correspond closely to the common conceptual framework outlined in Study I. The findings suggest that the relationship between formal education and economic and social outcomes is complex with confounding effects. The results indicate that learning occurring in different contexts and for different reasons leads to different kinds of benefits. The latter finding suggests a potential trade-off between realizing economic and social benefits through learning that are taken for either job-related or personal-interest related reasons. <u>Study V: The effects of learning on economic and social well being: A comparative analysis</u> Using the same structural model as in Study IV, hypotheses are comparatively examined using the International Adult Literacy Survey data for Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The main finding from Study IV is confirmed for an additional five countries, namely that the effect of initial schooling on well being is more complex than a direct one and it is significantly mediated by subsequent learning. Additionally, findings suggest that people who devote more time to learning for job-related reasons than learning for personal-interest related reasons experience higher levels of economic well being. Moreover, devoting too much time to learning for personal-interest related reasons has a negative effect on earnings except in Denmark. But the more time people devote to learning for personal-interest related reasons tends to contribute to higher levels of social well being. These results again suggest a trade-off in learning for different reasons and in different contexts.

This study aims to contribute to the growing body of knowledge on the circumstances under which adult education, in particular adult basic education, can support and occasionally initiate participatory development, social action and the realisation of citizenship rights. It traces developments in adult basic education in South Africa, and more specifically literacy and language learning, over the years 1981 to 2001, with reference to specific multilingual contexts in the Northern and Western Cape. The thesis is based on four individual studies, documenting an arc from grassroots work to national policy development and back. Study I, written in the early 1990s, critically examines approaches to teaching English to adults in South Africa at the time and proposes a participatory curriculum model for the additional language component of a future adult education policy. Study II is an account of attempts to implement this model and explores the implications of going to scale with such an approach.  Studies III and IV draw on a qualitative study of an educator development programme after the transition to democracy. Study III uses Bourdieu's theory of practice and the concept of reflexivity to illuminate some of  the connections between local discursive practices, self-formation, and broader relations of power. Study IV uses Iedema's (1999) concept of resemiotisation to trace the ways in which individuals re-shaped available representational resources to mobilise collective agency in community-based workshops. The summary provides a framework for these studies by locating and critiquing each within shifts in the political economy of South Africa. It reflects on a history of research and practice, raising questions to do with voice, justice, power, agency, and desire. Overall, this thesis argues for a reconceptualisation of ABET that is more strongly aligned with development goals and promotes engagement with new forms of state/society/economy relations.

Since the publication of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) findings in 1996, governments internationally have been cognisant of the need for functional literacy skill training for large segments of the New Zealand working-age population (Culligan1, Arnold, Noble, & Sligo, 2004; Ministry of Education, 2001; OECD, 2000). Individuals with low literacy levels generally report negative prior experiences of formal learning environments that are due to and have contributed to their current functional literacy capability (for example, see Neubauer & Dusewicz, 1988; Ross, 1987, 1988; Tilley et al., 2006). The present study aimed to systematically investigate and measure the dispositional coping styles and strategies associated with differing prose literacy capabilities. The purpose of this project was to provide an understanding of the coping-literacy relationship as a first step toward the development of coping strategy training interventions specifically targeted at improving the educational experience (current and future) of low literacy individuals. Secondary aims of the current study included exploring the relationship between persistence and coping style, adaptability, and prose literacy; determining whether and how coping styles, adaptability, and prose literacy changed over time; and, assessing the relationship between prose literacy, coping style, adaptability, and post-course goal achievement. Fifty-six students in adult vocational programmes were interviewed pre- and post-course. At each time point assessments of dispositional coping style and strategies via use of the COPE tool (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989) were gathered, as were measures of emotional intelligence (including adaptability), and prose literacy score. Participants also took part in a semi-structured qualitative interview which gathered information on their educational and employment history, and goals post-course. Situational assessments of coping behaviours outside of the course were also gathered as part of a larger study for future analysis purposes and are outside the scope of this thesis. Respondents were also interviewed at three and six months post-course to determine achievement or non-achievement of post-course goals. Low prose literacy scores were significantly associated with more frequent use of emotionfocused coping strategies (particularly avoidance). Higher prose literacy scores were significantly associated with more frequent use of problem-focused coping strategies. Indicative data showed that non-persisting participants showed higher emotion-focused coping strategy use than their persisting counterparts alongside lower prose literacy scores. Further, emotionfocused coping, adaptability, and prose literacy score were found to change significantly over time. However, post-course goal achievement was not significantly associated with any of the variables of interest except bivariately with prose literacy. The model of transactional stress and coping (Lazarus, 1966; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) and the control theory of self-regulation (Carver & Scheier, 1981, 2000) provided a framework for the discussion of the dispositional coping styles and strategies used by individuals of differing prose literacy ability. It was argued that a negative self-schema of the individual as a learner is developed through prior negative experiences of formal education. It was hypothesised that this negative self-schema, built from a low self-confidence and fear of educational failure and rejection, predisposed the individual to a heightened negative self-focus. This in turn was proposed to direct attention to the self and the associated emotional aspects of a response to a stressor, leading to a bias towards habitual coping strategies of avoidance and less frequent use of problem-focused strategies by this group. These findings and the associated interpretations have implications for the future development of coping strategy training interventions for individuals with low functional literacy competencies who wish to re-engage with formal education.

Since the publication of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) findings in 1996, governments internationally have been cognisant of the need for functional literacy skill training for large segments of the New Zealand working-age population (Culligan1, Arnold, Noble, & Sligo, 2004; Ministry of Education, 2001; OECD, 2000). Individuals with low literacy levels generally report negative prior experiences of formal learning environments that are due to and have contributed to their current functional literacy capability (for example, see Neubauer & Dusewicz, 1988; Ross, 1987, 1988; Tilley et al., 2006). The present study aimed to systematically investigate and measure the dispositional coping styles and strategies associated with differing prose literacy capabilities. The purpose of this project was to provide an understanding of the coping-literacy relationship as a first step toward the development of coping strategy training interventions specifically targeted at improving the educational experience (current and future) of low literacy individuals. Secondary aims of the current study included exploring the relationship between persistence and coping style, adaptability, and prose literacy; determining whether and how coping styles, adaptability, and prose literacy changed over time; and, assessing the relationship between prose literacy, coping style, adaptability, and post-course goal achievement. Fifty-six students in adult vocational programmes were interviewed pre- and post-course. At each time point assessments of dispositional coping style and strategies via use of the COPE tool (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989) were gathered, as were measures of emotional intelligence (including adaptability), and prose literacy score. Participants also took part in a semi-structured qualitative interview which gathered information on their educational and employment history, and goals post-course. Situational assessments of coping behaviours outside of the course were also gathered as part of a larger study for future analysis purposes and are outside the scope of this thesis. Respondents were also interviewed at three and six months post-course to determine achievement or non-achievement of post-course goals. Low prose literacy scores were significantly associated with more frequent use of emotionfocused coping strategies (particularly avoidance). Higher prose literacy scores were significantly associated with more frequent use of problem-focused coping strategies. Indicative data showed that non-persisting participants showed higher emotion-focused coping strategy use than their persisting counterparts alongside lower prose literacy scores. Further, emotionfocused coping, adaptability, and prose literacy score were found to change significantly over time. However, post-course goal achievement was not significantly associated with any of the variables of interest except bivariately with prose literacy. The model of transactional stress and coping (Lazarus, 1966; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) and the control theory of self-regulation (Carver & Scheier, 1981, 2000) provided a framework for the discussion of the dispositional coping styles and strategies used by individuals of differing prose literacy ability. It was argued that a negative self-schema of the individual as a learner is developed through prior negative experiences of formal education. It was hypothesised that this negative self-schema, built from a low self-confidence and fear of educational failure and rejection, predisposed the individual to a heightened negative self-focus. This in turn was proposed to direct attention to the self and the associated emotional aspects of a response to a stressor, leading to a bias towards habitual coping strategies of avoidance and less frequent use of problem-focused strategies by this group. These findings and the associated interpretations have implications for the future development of coping strategy training interventions for individuals with low functional literacy competencies who wish to re-engage with formal education.