Hello All!
I was just looking through the PIACC Infographics and I was disturbed by the second picture slide. It states, "Three out of ten adults in the U.S. are unlikely to be able to calculate." This is disturbing. What can we do or what do you already do as practitioners in the field to help adults in the U.S.? How can we let our communities, towns, cities, etc. know that we are reaching crisis level and something must be done?
I plan to show these statistics to our host institution - in hopes, that they will see a bigger need for adult education.
Share your thoughts.
Brooke
Comments
Brooke -
Can you be more specific where you found the slide on the PIAAC website? I'd like to look in more detail at what they say.
By "calculate" does the report mean "skill with pencil and paper" or does the report mean "UNDERSTAND" what they are doing and why?
If the report is talking about skill, then it may be that teaching the use of calculators too early is limiting calculation proficiency. If the report is addressing understanding, that is another matter.
It all goes back to basic number sense.
I did a couple college-sponsored research projects at Front Range Community College (Westminster, CO) in 2010. It looked at how students in developmental-level math placed five whole numbers on an empty number line as a measure of their sense of number relationships. The reports had been posted on a college-linked website. For some reason, that went away. The reports are now on my website www.rhythmandnumbersense.com
On the REFERENCES AND AUTHOR'S NOTES tab, click on Student Learning Research Project Report (there are two different ones) for the PDFs .
The bottom line: Based on earlier adult numeracy evaluations (like NALS in 1992 and NAAL in 2003 and others) I have been saying that 20% of adults lack an understanding of parts and whole existing at the same time in numbers. That is, if they have 9, they see either the 9 OR the 3 and 6 before these are joined to make 9.
I'm not surprised by the 30% of U.S. adults are "unlikely to be able to calculate." If you don't understand the physical relationships of numbers, calculation is a rote exercise. Any answer will do.
Dorothea Steinke
Lafayette, CO
I agree that it would be good to use that information to highlight the need for investing more in adult education... and my experiences with students are similar to Dorothea's and we've done that "five numbers on the number line" test with some of our students with similar results. (Another clue is when the student reaches for the calculator for 100 + 3...)
The other document that floors people when I show them the actual research charts is: http://commons.carnegiefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/stigler_dev-math.pdf -- when presented with adding a simple fraction to a decimal, 19% of the developmentally placed students ... ... got it right. Fewer than 1 in 5... A full 28% of them changed the decimal to a fraction, then added the numerators and denominators.
Unfortunately, a lot of communities, towns, cities.. simply think that "well, those people probably shouldn't be in college anyway." THat research includes interviews which indicate that actually, the students are perfectly *capabale* of making sense of math -- it's just never been how it was taught, or what was expected. They were supposed to perform procedures and pass tests. (Other research shows this pretty much gets nailed down in middle school -- "math class" math has nothing to do with using numbers in the real world...)
It would be interesting to explore presenting this in a way that might appeal to the X % of people in any given audience who are in that 30% but hide it (or in the other clump that sort of can do it when they need to, but are afraid of it)....
Yes, Brooke, this is disturbing! And think about all the people who have just now signed up for health insurance for the first time! There's a lot of calculating there. Not to mention, adhering to the complicated medicine regimes that many people have to do in order to manage their chronic disease.
Here's another enlightening result from PIAAC about numeracy and health:
The relationship between numeracy and self-reported health status is stronger in the U.S. than in almost all the other countries.
See this thread on the health literacy group for more info:
PIAAC, Literacy, Numeracy and Health Status
https://community.lincs.ed.gov/discussion/piaac-literacy-numeracy-and-health-status