The International Adult Literacy Survey (MLS) offers researchers comparative data on levels of literacy in seven industrial societies, based on an instrument reflecting the "cognitivist" approach to measurement adapted from the work of Kirsch & Mosenthai. 'The use of nationally representative samples and systematically conducted household interviews represents a great advance on previous census and school-based studies, but the research embodies some serious conceptual problems. Some of these derive from the initial adoption of a definition of literacy that is not subsequently operationalized in the study. Others spring from the use of test items originating in North American research which were not demonstrably familiar to the non-Anglophone participants in the study. As a consequence, some of the occupational and international differences detected are likely to be an artifact of the scales used.
This paper also examines the survey's findings, explanations, and predictions relating to the role of literacy in the labor markets for lower-skill jobs. It is argued that the single-snapshot design of the MLS study does not support predictions about future labor market developments, and that some of the explanations are not supported by relevant British research. The IALS approach is criticized for adopting a conception of literacy that is over-individualistic and which is too exclusively tied to a partisan view of labor market processes.
2023. International Literacy Assessments. In Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research, ► pp. 3600 ff.
Addey, Camilla
2018. Assembling Literacy as Global: The Danger of a Single Story. In The Palgrave International Handbook on Adult and Lifelong Education and Learning, ► pp. 315 ff.
Arffman, Inga
2010. Equivalence of Translations in International Reading Literacy Studies. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 54:1 ► pp. 37 ff.
Bartlett, Lesley
2008. Literacy's verb: Exploring what literacy is and what literacy does. International Journal of Educational Development 28:6 ► pp. 737 ff.
Wagner, Daniel A.
2003. Smaller, quicker, cheaper: alternative strategies for literacy assessment in the UN Literacy Decade. International Journal of Educational Research 39:3 ► pp. 293 ff.
Wagner, Daniel A.
2008. Adult Literacy: Monitoring and Evaluation for Practice and Policy. International Review of Education 54:5-6 ► pp. 651 ff.
Darville, Richard
1999. Knowledges of adult literacy: surveying for competitiveness. International Journal of Educational Development 19:4-5 ► pp. 273 ff.
Street, Brian
1998. New literacies in theory and practice: What are the implications for language in education?. Linguistics and Education 10:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
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