Session Information
23 SES 08 C, Global / Local Conversations about Adult Literacy Research
Symposium
Contribution
Extensive and often chaotic change in the field of adult literacy has prompted scholars and activists to focus on policy processes in the effort to understand how change is orchestrated, how teachers and learners can respond to and manage change and how we can theorise these relationships. This paper will explore how representations of literacy and literacy learners bridge current discourses of globalization with local educational practice. It will use examples from an historical policy study which has traced the reshaping of the field of adult literacy in the UK since the 1970s together with contemporary data from the current Skills for Life policy. Theoretical tools from literacy studies, complexity theory and science and technology studies are used in the analysis to identify key mechanisms of glocalisation operating in a complex policy environment. The analysis shows how representations of literacy and literacy learners are shaped by the multiple layers of national, European and wider international policy. Neo-liberal priorities are evident in these representations including a human resource rationale for literacy education, new notions of global citizenship, moves to harmonise qualifications across countries, and technicist approaches to policy intervention and impact assessment.
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