Colleagues,
We are presenting the PIAAC Prison results about incarcerated adults's skills and participation in education at COABE. Specifically, we will explore the following issues: the relationship between incarcerated adults’ PIAAC reading component skills and literacy and passage comprehension performance, characteristics and skill levels of incarcerated adults with less than a high school education, the role of learning in the lives of incarcerated adults with low skills, and the degree to which demographic factors and learning-related cognitive skills are associated with educational-programming desire among the U.S. prison population. While our session at the conference is Tuesday, April 2nd 8:00am-9:00am, in Galerie 3, we do welcome any questions you may have on this forum.
Comments
Will you be exploring anything about health literacy in prisoners? Do you have a copy of your abstract that you would be willing to share?
Thanks in advance,
Dave
Hi, Dave,
Thanks for your question about health literacy! I am one of the authors who will be presenting in the PIAAC session at COABE. The topic is Incarcerated Adults with Low Skills. Specifically, I looked at incarcerated adults with less than a high school education (LHS). Below are a few health-related findings from the paper.
Margaret
About half endorse excellent or very good health and one fourth good health. More than a fourth (27.7%) reports having fair or poor health. Two fifths of women report fair or poor health (39.2%), , significantly higher than the 26.8% of men doing so. Aggregate rates for vision difficulties are 20.4% and 15.2% for hearing difficulties. These rates are nearly twice the rates, 11.4% for vision and 8.7% for hearing, of the general population, respectively (Patterson & Paulson, 2016). More than a third of LHS incarcerated adults report diagnoses of LD (37.1%), which is four times the general population LD rate of 8% (Patterson & Paulson, 2016).... The nearly doubled rates of vision or hearing difficulties and quadrupled rates of LD (37.1%) among LHS incarcerated adults compared with the general population (Patterson & Paulson, 2016; Rampey et al., 2016) point to adults with critical health concerns and challenges from disabilities that can affect their learning as well as re-entry after release (Brazzell et al., 2009; Hatzenbuehler et al., 2015; Lattimore et al., 2012; OECD, 2013).
This is valuable information. If I've interpreted your response correctly, we have a quarter of respondents to the study indicate poor (or fair) health, with more women indicating poor health than their male counterparts. So, let me ask our community members to chime in with how they address these concerns:
I'm looking forward to learning about your best-practices.
Sincerely,
Kathy Tracey
@Kathy_Tracey
Hi, Kathy,
Yes, that's right! Your list of questions is right on target. I would also add a question: how are adults, whether in correctional or in re-entry programs, screened for health issues that can impact learning? Adult may not always be aware of the issues, so staff may need to be on the lookout for challenges with vision or hearing that can affect learning. I'll be curious to learn what others are doing. And for those who are coming to COABE, please bring ideas to share in the PIAAC session. Thanks!
Margaret
Katie,
I am excited about your presentation at COABE and am looking forward to learning more about what you've discovered as you explored the data. For those who may want to peruse some of the information, here's a link to the PIACC information The primary goal of the PIAAC is to assess adults over a broad range of abilities, from simple reading to complex-problem solving skills, and to college information on individual's skill use and background (p. 2.).
I hope those of you attending COABE have a chance to join this session and Katie, we'd love to learn more from your group about what you've discovered.
Kathy
Colleagues,
I came across this blog, The Relationship Between Incarceration and Low Literacy, and I wonder if the PIAAC Data supports the same findings?
From the blog,
So, if we have young adults in our adult education programs, what interventions do we need to incorporate into our programs to help keep them out of the criminal justice system?
Sincerely,
Kathy Tracey
@Kathy_Tracey