New Literacy Circle!

You are invited to help develop and to participate in a Literacy Circle to discuss the following resource in our Community of Practice: Trawick,  A.R. (2017). Using the *PIAAC Literacy Framework to Guide Instruction: An Introduction for Adult Educators, Washington, DC.

Click Here to access the Literacy Guide, as introduced to us by David Rosen in our Literacy Guide discussion.

This Literacy Guide provides rich resources to help us reflect on the meaning of literacy among adults as well as to evaluate and develop reading and writing strategies to be implemented among our adult learners. The Guide itself addresses reading only. In our projected Literacy Circle, it would be very beneficial to also discuss how writing activities could contribute to the literacy level of our students. Following are quotes from the Guide for you to consider:

Literacy is defined as the ability to understand, evaluate, use and engage with written texts to participate in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential.

Literacy encompasses a range of skills from the decoding of written words and sentences to the comprehension, interpretation, and evaluation of complex texts. It does not, however, involve the production of text (writing).

Information on the skills of adults with low levels of proficiency is provided by an assessment of reading components that covers text vocabulary, sentence comprehension and passage fluency. (OECD, 2013b, p. 59) PIAAC delineates literacy from numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments and defines each with its own framework.

It’s important to note upfront that the PIAAC framework uses literacy to refer to reading related activity, as opposed to activity related to spoken language or the act of producing written texts. The survey focused only on reading because of the current limitations of assessing across language and culture on an international scale (OECD, 2013b; PIAAC Literacy Expert Group, 2009).

I presently envision this discussion to take place in a Literacy Circle micro group in this community. We can discuss the best timing for this “event,” with start and ending dates to take place in the summer of this year, anytime between June and August.

Please email me at the address below, to let me know of your interest in participating in this Circle and also to list ways in which you might help develop and implement our dialogue. One other members has shown an interest to date. Let’s strive to have 6-8 core members become a part of this very useful and, hopefully, engaging and fun activity.

Let me hear from you! With thanks in advance, Leecy

*PIAAC: The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is a cyclical, large-scale study that was developed under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Adults were surveyed in 24 participating countries in 2012 and 9 additional countries in 2014.

Leecy Wise, Moderator
Reading and Writing CoP
leecywise@gmail.com

Comments

I started reading this publication yesterday and thought the explanation of why they worded the definition of literacy this way was very informative. I certainly appreciate that instead of just sending out the results of the survey, PIAAC has enlisted experts in the topics to develop tools that can be used by adult educators in their classrooms. I'm looking forward to delving into this guide with Leecy and others who sign up for the study circle.