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Work to describe the purposes served by adults' literacy and numeracy skills has
been conducted in several countries. In Australia, for example, Kindler et al., (1996)
reported on four such purposes: literacy for self-expression, literacy for practical purposes,
literacy for knowledge, and literacy for public debate. In the Equipped for the Future
initiative, The National Institute for Literacy in the United States has sponsored efforts
to define critical skill areas. As part of the project, adult learners were asked what they
needed to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of
citizenship. Content analysis yielded four broad types of purposes (Stein, 1995):
- Literacy for access and orientation in the world,
- Literacy as voice to one's ideas and opinions,
- Literacy for independent action, solving problems and making decisions
as a parent, citizen and worker,
- Literacy as a bridge to further learning and to keep up with a rapidly
changing world.
In Australia, a range of work has been done to create standards and a hierarchy of
numeracy skill development that is not based upon school mathematics descriptions
(Coates et al. 1995). In one key project (Kindler et al. 1996), numeracy was organized
into four broad categories, according to different purposes and functions of using
mathematics. Numeracy for Practical Purposes addresses aspects of the physical world
that involve designing, making, and measuring. Numeracy for Interpreting
Society relates
to interpreting and reflecting on numerical and graphical information in public
documents and texts. Numeracy for Personal Organization focuses on the
numeracy requirements for personal organizational matters involving money, time
and travel.
Numeracy for Knowledge describes the mathematical skills needed for
further study in
mathematics, or other subjects with mathematical underpinnings and/or assumptions.
Overall, the purposes regarding literacy and numeracy appear to agree and suggest
that adults need to be able to apply their numeracy and literacy skills to tasks with a
social purpose in both informal and more formal contexts.
1.3 Educational perspectives
Recent years saw a growing dialogue about the goals and impact of mathematics education
in schools. Various arguments have been brought forward to support a broadening of
the conceptions regarding the mathematical skills and knowledge that school graduates
should possess. In a society in which the media constantly present information in
numerical or graphical form, the ability to interpret quantitative and statistical messages
has been positioned by key stakeholders in education as vital for all adults (Steen,
1997). While employers have focused mostly on practical or job-specific numeracy
skills, educators associated with the mathematical sciences have also paid much attention
to the importance of quantitative literacy in civic and social contexts, and argued that
mathematics is a crucial part of a common fabric of communication indispensable for
modern civilized society, in part because it is the language of science and technology.
Thus, understanding of public discussions and reports about socially important topics
such as health and environmental issues are impossible without using the language of
mathematics (National Research Council, 1989).
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