Assessing Adult Literacy: The Aim, Use and Benefits of Standardized Screening Tools

Large-scale surveys, such as the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) (OECD & Canada, 2000), provide interesting data on literacy and numeracy skills on a cross-country level. They attempt to answer policy-related questions like: how many adults have low first language literacy or are at risk of becoming low-literate and what are their characteristics? In these studies, groups of adults are commonly described as having either high or low literacy skills. But since reading or writing ability itself is a continuum, the question arises: what is the cut-off point? In other words: where does the "problem" of low literacy begin and when is educational or some other kind of intervention in a specific context necessary or desirable? When answering these questions and promoting adult literacy development, most educational sectors will make use of micro-level analysis to complement the macro-level data. In that case, tools that describe the learning needs and interests of individuals are necessary. The research we report on in this article examines the (practical) possibilities, difficulties and policy measures which underlie the use of such standardized literacy screening devices or basic skills audits among adults having Dutch as their mother tongue. Built upon a qualitative analysis of existing screening instruments in Belgium (Flemish Community) and the Netherlands, this study explores how screening procedures are adopted today in different sectors and in which way these procedures are able to identify the particularities of individual adults' literacy skills. By conducting in-depth interviews with experts (policy makers, academic experts, educational practitioners, low-literates) on the topic of (low) literacy, the advantages and disadvantages of the implementation of a single and uniform standardized screening tool for different educational sectors were explored. The results of this study (D'hertefelt et al., 2007) show that not all social domains are equally open to educational assessment using a standardized literacy test in an objective and accurate way. Moreover, the results show that literacy screening may lead to several negative effects. It is argued that in some contexts, those negative effects might overshadow the positive ones. Furthermore, none of the existing tools in Belgium and the Netherlands is able to screen all aspects of literacy in one short and practical way. From this we conclude that although there is a powerful internal logic in the use of one single screening instrument for assessment, the practical benefits of such a device can be questioned and so can the ethical ones. The use of several instruments aligned with the needs of specific target groups is therefore strongly recommended. The context of the screening procedure and the literacy context (such as a health care and workplace) should be incorporated in the instrument. Other results will be presented in this paper, such as the importance of oral feedback on the candidate results, the training of the assessors, the integration of the screening in normal educational procedures and the link between the assessment and the methods of training.

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