Learners Needs Literacy competencies Fernando LpezPalma University of Barcelona

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Learners Needs Literacy competencies Fernando
López-PalmaUniversity of Barcelona

• Hamburg
• 2008

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Learners Needs

• 
  
• 
  According to the Experts
• The most basic According
  to the Social
• competencies Demand
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  According to the
• 
  own Learners

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• According to the Social
• Demand

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http//www.modeval.org
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www.modeval.orgThe investigation includes 38
organizations from ten countries, 96 tests.
Belgium, Denmark France, Greece, Germany,
Hungary, Latvuia,, Malta, Poland and Spain
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Social Demand of Basic Competencies
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• According to the
• own Learners

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• Importance degree in the
  different areas
• of basic knowledge in Adult Education
• 
  According to the learners
• 
  Scores on a scale where 1
  (minor) and 7 (very important)
• 
  
  Media (1-7) N 632
• 
  1. Technology
  5,70
• 2. Communication
  5,31
• 3. Labour aspects
  and laws 5,21
• 4. Daily scope
  and consumption 4,98
• 5. Management and
  citizen participation 4,87
• 6. Culture and
  social world 4,46

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• How to investigate the level of literacy
  competencies that the people have

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A look to current adult basic competencies
assessments

• In the area of basics competencies assessment
  there is plenty of research done under the
  umbrella of the first approach (i.e., OCDE,
  European Union)

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• Even in the case of using simulated situations
  (e.g., prose or document use items on OCDE and
  European Countries surveys) they are that
  simulated, that it is used an artificial
  context.

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It is possible to distinguish three different
approaches of collecting information

• Objective world
• Subjective world
• Social world
• Theory of Communicative Action. J. Habermas

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• This approach combines a triple perspective
• 1. Study of the objective world with a
  quantitative survey
• 2. Study of the subjective world (life world)
  via life stories, in depth interviews, and focus
  discussion groups.
• 3. Study of the social world via direct
  observation of people functioning in real day
  life situations (i.e., post office, hospital,
  shops, etc.) And post observation, and personal
  interviews with those involved.

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• From this perspective, the research not only
  collects the information from the objective and
  the subjective world, but, using direct
  observation of real day life situations,
  collects an extreme valuable information that is
  not collected with the other two approaches.

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A summary of these limitation could be as follows

• To study the low level of competencies partially,
  i.e., only as something that can be fully
  understood from survey data, or only from
  individual recounts.
• A positivistic deformation to study an issue
  without the functional real contexts.
• To only count deficits, lacks, without
  recognizing peoples --popular knowledge-- ways
  of functioning in society. Somehow, there is a
  very technocratic consideration of culture, and a
  transfer of responsibility to the individuals,
  blaming the victim.
• There is a tendency of isolating individuals from
  context, thus reinforcing the forces of system
  colonizing the life world.

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• There is a need to focus the studies on common
  knowledge (i.e., peoples alternative functional
  strategies ) instead of focus on what people
  dont know (i.e., to count lack of knowledge
  even doing profiles)
• There is an use of language (e.g., in
  administrative environments) as a way of
  legitimating certain power, economic value and
  social status which entails a hierarchical
  division of knowledge.

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• Literacy programs and research should be based on
  people competencies and not only on academic
  knowledge

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http//www.modeval.org
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How to make the descriptionof the level
competencies Theorical basis

• Interdisciplinary Character
• - Sociology
• - Cultural and cognitive Psychology
• Anthropology
• Pedagogy
• Linguistics
• Sociolinguistics

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Pour la compréhension des niveaux de compétence
il faut étudier deux niveaux dannalisi
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According to Habermas view

• Modernity, and moreover contemporary society,
  is better understood as the imposition of the
  logic system into the life world, the
  colonization of the life world by instrumental
  reason.