literacy for life; EFA global monitoring report, 2006 - Institut de ...

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186 / CHAPTER 7
2
Education for All Global Monitoring Report
Some literacy
tests neglect
the cultural
specificity of
literacy skills and
practices and
inadvertently
incorporate
cultural biases
Box 7.7
Implications for measuring and monitoring literacy
The measurement and monitoring of literacy and
illiteracy has evolved considerably during the past
fifty years. Today, more than ever, it is important to:
clarify what is meant by ‘literacy’, including
distinguishing among different types and levels
of literacy;
improve the measurement of literacy in both
developing and developed countries, in part by
moving away from census-based data to surveybased
data;
strengthen the direct assessment of literacy
skills and practices;
enhance technical capacities for measuring and
monitoring adult literacy in developing countries.
From the perspective of the global monitoring of
literacy, the present infrastructure for measuring and
assessing literacy is inadequate. Proposals put forth
by the UIS, in particular the LAMP strategy, while
achieving considerable scientific rigour and crosscase
comparability, raise difficult feasibility questions.
As such, they contribute very little to monitoring
progress towards the EFA literacy goal and, more
broadly, to expanding literate environments and
sustaining literacy competencies and practices. There
is value in staking out — and legitimizing — a middle
territory, one which goes beyond conventional
approaches to measuring literacy and provides
a feasible strategy for examining progress towards
a significant improvement in adult literacy rates by
2015.
countries have been unsuccessful (Street, 2005).
Yet another criticism is that IALS-like literacy
tests neglect the cultural specificity of literacy
skills and practices and inadvertently incorporate
cultural biases (Hamilton and Barton, 2000;
Street, 1996).
Overall, the development of comparable
international statistics on literacy to monitor
progress (or the lack thereof) poses special
problems, which will continue to be debated
among scholars, donors and policy-makers.
Tentatively, the EFA Global Monitoring Report calls
for the construction of several types of self-standing
literacy modules that would:
address concerns of national policy-makers as well
as those of international monitoring agencies by
offering multiple measurement and assessment
strategies;
be easily incorporated into ongoing household
surveys (e.g. on living standards, the labour force
and consumption) carried out in developing
countries;
measure literacy and numeracy in the entire
adult population (aged 15+);
minimize the exclusion of groups often excluded
from literacy surveys;
constitute a relatively short (20– to 30–minutes)
but sophisticated assessment tool, building on
the accumulation of expertise in this field.
This is in line with new initiatives undertaken by
the UIS to provide literacy assessment tools
complementary to LAMP. In particular, there is
considerable value in the Literacy Questionnaire
Module Project, which consists of about ten questions
for monitoring literacy trends that can be attached to
existing surveys (either census or household surveys).
Items on self-declaration, use of literacy skills,
literacy environment and languages, along with two
or three simple tests, would be included.
In response to earlier concerns over the validity,
reliability and comparability of existing literacy
data, new methods and data sources have been
developed. There is considerable consensus
(Box 7.7) that conventional assessments must be
complemented with more detailed and nuanced
literacy information. Indeed, to fully appreciate
and address the enormous challenges of
illiteracy, stakeholders and analysts must insist
on feasible, timely, affordable and scientifically
robust assessments of literacy.