The 2003 Adult Literacy and Lifeskills (ALL) Survey

In 2003 a follow-up to the IALS was conducted. Called the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills (ALL) survey, the new international survey of adult literacy once again focussed on the relevance of or scale of need for adult literacy education. The ALL survey used the same prose and document scales as used in the IALS, and the results obtained in 2003 were about the same as those for the mid-1990s. Headlines from a press release dated May 11, 2005 from a national organization concerned with adult literacy in Canada stated, "After nine years, the same per cent of adults have low literacy. Regarding those Canadians, aged 16 to 65, scoring literacy Levels 1 and 2, deemed below the minimum of what is suitable for coping with the demands of everyday life and work, the percentage reported in ALL is the same as was recorded in 1994 (42 per cent). Level 1 literacy skill means a person is unable to read, for example, information on a medicine bottle. Level 2 means the person can only deal with simple printed material, and has difficulty facing new demands or tasks at work or in the community.”

Literacy in Prose and Document Scales

In both the IALS and ALL surveys literacy was assessed using two different scales of literacy, the prose and document scales. In Functional Context Education theory the use of these two scales is based on the idea that literacy is considered a part of the use of graphics technology. One aspect of graphics technology use in literacy is the use of the alphabet as a graphic display of aspects of the spoken language. This is based on the idea that the written language is a second signaling system for speech, i.e., a “coded” version of the spoken language. In the IALS and ALL surveys, the prose scale is considered as a written representation of speech.

In the document scale, a second aspect of graphics use in literacy is considered. In this case the written language is embedded in a graphic information display such as a form, with blanks labeled such Name, Residence, etc. In this case the document must be searched while the written language is being decoded. This means that the Document scale can be more or less difficult due to either the difficulty of the language in the Document, or the complexity of the graphic display, or an interaction of both.

By considering literacy as competence in working with graphics technology, instructors can help adult learners understand that much of what is encountered in teaching and learning reading results from the fundamental characteristics of graphics displays. These characteristics permit literates to work with the graphics technology in certain ways. Furthermore, the products of the work of literates create new graphics displays (e.g., history timelines; TV schedules; troubleshooting flow diagrams; atlases, etc.). This imposes demands upon new readers who wish to learn to work with these new displays.

Major Features of Graphics Technology. The major features of graphics technology, examples of the types of products that may be produced by those in command of the technology, and examples of the types of demands for information processing that the products of this technology may require include:

1. Permanence. Graphic information displays, such as this page of print, or forms, tables, graphs, and so forth, are more or less permanent. Therefore, they can be used to collect or store information, including an extended body of knowledge. The information can be stored over time and retrieved later on, and it can be transported across space.