Zeitschrift für Weiterbildungsforschung - CfP Basic and Language Education for Adults with Low Literacy Skills

Issue 2|2024

Guest Editors
Irit Bar-Kochva, Daphne Greenberg, Carol Clymer, Esther Prins

Editors
Josef Schrader, Bernhard Schmidt-Hertha

On the recent PIAAC survey (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, OECD, 2016), an average of 18.9% of the adult population in the participating countries showed low performance in reading tasks and 22.7% showed low performance in numeracy tasks. Although standardized literacy assessments do not fully capture adults’ literate capabilities in daily life, these figures nonetheless underscore the significant need for adult basic and literacy education across the world. International large-scale surveys, such as PIAAC, also provide the ground for an international discussion on the topic by referring to common measures and scales, which enable direct comparisons between countries.Since the need to build literacy skills in adulthood is a cross-national phenomenon, transnational research could contribute to greater understanding, planning, and implementation of adult basic education and literacy instruction throughout the world. Considering the many potential advantages of internationalization in research (Woldegiyorgis, Proctor, & de Wit, 2018), further efforts should be made to integrate knowledge from smaller[1]scale studies carried out nationally in different countries. With this issue, we aim to assemble an international exchange of knowledge, experiences, and expertise in research about adult literacy learning and development, while relating to a broad understanding of literacies that may include skills involving reading, writing, oral language, numeracy, digital skills, financial literacy and health literacy.

We will consider manuscripts addressing one or more of the following topics:

• program effectiveness and adult learners’ outcomes
• teacher-learnerinteractions (e.g., teachers´ skills of managing heterogeneous classes)
• Readability of textsfor adults who need to develop literacy skillsin everyday life contexts
• instructional materials and methods
• identities of adult learners (e.g., sense of classroom belonging, self-perception of learners)
• characteristics of adult learners who need to develop literacy skills (e.g., cognitiveand background profiles and their assessment)
• literacy skills and needsrelated to second- or multilingual-language learners
• organizations and policiesthat influence program implementation and learner outcomes
• how adult basic and language learners use literacies and numeraciesin their daily lives

We also invite other topics related to the study of adults who want to develop their literacy skills. We will consider quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods study designs. Theoretical reviews or secondary data analyses will also be of interest.

We expect that this issue will contribute to the understanding of the needs of different stakeholders in basic and language education, including learners, teachers, and organizations.

(references: see PDF)

All manuscripts will undergo a double-blind peer review procedure. The editorial office accepts manuscripts only for first and single publication (i.e., manuscripts that have not been previously published and are not being considered elsewhere for publication).
Manuscript length: max. 50,000 characters (incl. spaces and reference list).

Your article will be published online approx. 3 weeks after acceptance and will be fully citable from that moment on.

Further information on the journal and the submission of manuscripts is available on the website https://www.springer.com/journal/40955/

Download CfP (PDF) here.  (this opens in a new tab)