This paper systematises the evidence regarding effective teaching practices in primary school classrooms, with special focus on evidence from low- and middle-income countries. Accordingly, the paper provides theoretical and empirical foundations for the content of the newly developed Teach classroom observation tool.

Authors: Ezequiel Molina, Adelle Pushparatnam, Sara Rimm-Kaufman & Keri Ka-Yee Wong

Source: Molina, E.; Pushparatnam, A.; Rimm-Kaufman, S.; Wong, K. K.-Y. (2018). Evidence-based teaching. Effective teaching practices in primary school classrooms. Policy Research Working Paper 8656. World Bank Group. Education Global Practice.

This paper systematises the evidence regarding effective teaching practices in primary school classrooms, with special focus on evidence from low- and middle-income countries. Accordingly, the paper provides theoretical and empirical foundations for the content of the newly developed Teach classroom observation tool.

• A significant number of countries around the world are facing a ‘learning crisis’: a large share of children complete primary school without acquiring even basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills.
• This raises the question how is it possible that after sitting in a classroom for between four and seven hours per day for five to six years, a large portion of students are still not able to read, write, or do basic arithmetic?
• A growing body of evidence suggests that the learning crisis (to a large extent) reflects a teaching crisis.
• Teach is a new measure specifically designed for low- and middle-income countries to begin to address these gaps in knowledge and to develop a common language of analysis of teaching practices.
• It focuses on several main elements that reflect universal experiences that lead to learning, regardless of the culture and physical condition of the classroom.

Evidence for the Teach framework

Time on learning

• Effective teachers maximise the amount of time that students spend on learning.
• Thus, Teach includes two observable teacher behaviours for maximising time on learning in the classroom: the teacher’s provision of learning activities to most students and students being on task.
• The evidence shows a significant positive association between teachers’ instructional time and students’ test scores.
• Evidence also shows that when students are on task and engaged, they learn significantly more than when they are not.

Classroom culture

• Classroom culture refers to a set of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours jointly shared by the teacher and students.
• In Teach, classroom culture encompasses two elements: a supportive learning environment and positive behavioural expectations.

Supportive learning environment

• Teach includes four behaviours that are used to measure the extent to which the teacher is effective at establishing a supportive learning environment in the classroom:
• The teacher treats all students respectfully.
  • This promotes positive teacher–student relationships and has a positive impact on student academic achievement.
• The teacher uses positive language with students.
  • Praise and encouragement provide information to students about what is expected of them and help children to recognise that the more engaged they are on the task, the more likely they are to reach their learning goals.
• The teacher responds to student needs.
  • Responsive teachers show fairness and justice toward their students, demonstrate compassion toward students as individuals, and provide the emotional or physical support that students need in class.
  • Students whose needs are met enjoy the long-term benefits of being more engaged in school and performing better academically, socially, and behaviourally.
• The teacher does not exhibit gender bias and challenges gender stereotypes in the classroom.
  • Teacher behaviours (such as calling on students of different races and genders equally and using inclusive language) are central features of a positive learning environment and are linked with improved student achievement.
  • It is important that teachers are cognisant of their own biases and how these impact student learning.

Positive behavioural expectations

• Teachers who are consistent and positive in establishing expectations not only help students reach their academic potential but also support students’ development of positive behaviour, social skills, and self-control within a safe environment.
• Teach includes three behaviours that measure the extent to which the teacher is effective at setting positive behavioural expectations in the classroom:
• The teacher sets clear behavioural expectations for classroom activities.
  • Studies have demonstrated that teachers who expect positive behaviours from students and set these standards help promote constructive teacher–student interactions, support the development of student socioemotional skills and self-regulation as well as helping to increase student academic success.
• The teacher acknowledges positive student behaviour.
  • The evidence is strongest for teacher praise as a strategy to recognise students’ successful behaviours. In turn, this leads to increases in correct responses, student productivity, and accuracy.
• The teacher redirects misbehaviour and focuses on expected behaviour, rather than on the undesired behaviour.
  • Teachers who redirect misbehaviour by focusing on the expected classroom behaviour (also known as ‘differential reinforcement’) see an increase in desirable behaviours, less aggressive and destructive classroom behaviours, and an overall reduction in classroom stress levels.

Instruction

• Effective teachers deliver content in a way that is clear and interesting to students. They engage students in varied activities that promote thinking, build in ways of assessing understanding, and offer feedback to students.
• In Teach, instruction encompasses four elements: 1) lesson facilitation, 2) checking understanding, 3) feedback, and 4) critical thinking.

Lesson facilitation

• Teach includes four behaviours to measure teacher effectiveness at facilitating the lesson to promote student comprehension:
• The teacher explicitly articulates the objectives of the lesson and relates classroom activities to these objectives.
  • Teachers need to: 1) develop clear and specific learning objectives for the lesson, 2) communicate the learning objectives to the class, and 3) relate classroom activities to the objectives.
  • Research shows that teachers who establish clear and specific learning goals for each lesson use class time more effectively.
• Explanation of content is clear.
  • Teachers’ ability to explain concepts clearly to students also promotes academic learning outcomes.
  • Another teaching method found to be helpful is clarifying content to illustrate complicated concepts in the form of logical and/or visual representations using simple concept-maps and graphs.
• The teacher makes connections in the lesson that relate to other content knowledge or the daily lives of students.
  • Effective teachers make lesson content relevant to students by incorporating examples from their daily lives, also known as ‘bridging scaffolds’. This process can not only enhance learning outcomes, but it can also promote student motivation, self-confidence, and perseverance.
  • Linking new information to prior knowledge is effective across subject areas, a finding demonstrated by a variety of key studies.
  • Another effective teaching strategy is to engage students in a discussion where they model the connections between old and new content.
• The teacher models by enacting or thinking aloud.
  • Effective teachers model their approach to problems in front of their students.
  • Beyond student gains, modelling is a means of promoting student self-efficacy and self-regulation, which is central to their learning process.
  • Enacting involves showing students the steps needed to complete a task.
  • By thinking aloud and walking students through thought processes, students are then able to take a similar approach to solving similar problems on their own.

Checks for understanding

• Teachers play an important role in checking whether and how much students understand learning material.
• Teach includes three specific teacher behaviours that gauge whether the teacher is effective at checking for students’ understanding:
• The teacher uses questions, prompts, or other strategies to determine students’ level of understanding.
  • Asking students questions and checking the understanding of all students is a type of formative feedback that supports learning and has been identified as a critical component of instruction.
  • Other strategies shown to work include teachers presenting new material in small steps and checking student understanding by having students practice after each step.
• The teacher monitors most students during independent/group work.
  • Active monitoring and facilitation during independent and group work ensure that students are engaged and increase their learning.
  • Facilitation during in-class group work activities (such as monitoring student discussions and interjecting to clarify concepts and increase student engagement) is one of the most important principles of good teaching.
• The teacher adjusts teaching to the level of students.
  • Effective teachers are skilled at both recognising and adjusting to students’ individual and collective needs. This promotes student engagement, self-regulation, and achievement.
  • The teacher’s ability to teach to different student levels (known as differentiated instruction) is grounded in Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (1978), which refers to the area between what a learner can do without guidance and what they cannot do.
  • Several effective teaching strategies of differential instruction at the macro and micro levels include grouping techniques, continual assessment strategies, and tiered lessons.

Feedback

• Teachers who give consistent, periodical, and process-oriented feedback are associated with self-regulated, high-achieving students, decreased off-task behaviour and disruptive classroom behaviours, and increased academic engagement.
• Studies underscore the importance of providing feedback that is instructive, timely, referenced to the actual task, focused on what is correct, and focused on what to do next.
• Metacognitive feedback is recommended because it provides cues about the content and structure of the problem and possible solutions, whereas results feedback only provides cues related to the final outcome of the problem.
• Teach includes two behaviours that capture the extent to which the teacher provides feedback that promotes student comprehension:
• The teacher provides specific comments or prompts that help clarify students’ misunderstandings.
  • Teacher feedback that encourages students to ask questions about the learning task or to further clarify their misunderstandings can enhance the overall learning environment of the classroom.
  • Teachers should avoid using general questions or giving general declarations that do not identify specific aspects of the problem or task to be improved as this will only confuse students more.
  • When students need clarification on content or have misunderstood a concept, it is important for teachers to address errors to avoid negative transfer and future misconceptions.
• The teacher provides specific comments or prompts that help identify students’ successes.
  • It is important that teachers systematically offer positive reinforcement to students and build upon student responses to solidify these successes.

Critical thinking

• A teacher who encourages students to actively analyse and critique concepts can help enhance the learning process.
• This involves the teacher asking open-ended questions that require reasoning, explanation, or generalisation or that have more than one correct answer.
• Teacher should provide thinking tasks, such as making predictions, identifying patterns, explaining thinking from different views, making connections, and interpreting information.
• Teach includes three behaviours to capture the extent the teacher builds student critical thinking skills:
• The teacher asks open-ended questions.
  • Questions that focus on higher-order skills rather than management-related and information recall-related questions have been found to be effective for developing critical thinking skills.
• The teacher provides thinking tasks.
  • Teachers should encourage a deep learning approach among students by providing prompts and contextualised scaffolding, and encouraging students to ask questions, predict, and explain phenomena during activities.
• Students ask open-ended questions or performs thinking tasks.
  • Student engagement in self-explanation, or higher-order thinking is particularly effective for student learning and knowledge consolidation.
  • For example, students who probe concepts by asking ‘why’ will enhance their knowledge of the topic, their ability to summarise key points, and their understanding of how such new information can be integrated with existing knowledge.

Socioemotional skills

• Increasing evidence shows that socioemotional skills development plays an important role in academic achievement.
• Effective teachers use techniques and strategies designed to improve children’s socioemotional development. Thus, they benefit children’s understanding of the people in the world around them as well as support children’s ability to understand and work with people who are different from them.
• Emotional processes refer to students’ knowledge, awareness, and management of emotion.
• Cognitive regulation involves students’ management of their attention and inhibition of inappropriate responses.
• Social and interpersonal skills involve interpreting others’ behaviours and interacting in positive ways with other people.
• Teach measures how teachers support student autonomy (cognitive regulation skills), perseverance (emotional processes and cognitive regulation), and social and collaborative skills (emotional processes and interpersonal skills).

Autonomy

• Effective teachers foster autonomy in the classroom by creating opportunities for students to take ownership of their own learning by building instruction around students’ interests, preferences, and choices.
• Teach includes three behaviours that indicate teacher’s support for autonomy in the classroom:
• The teacher provides students with choices.
  • Offering students choice helps them engage more actively in learning, feel less negative emotion associated with learning, and develop their own sense of optimal challenge in academic work.
  • Autonomy support behaviours can be categorised into three types: 1) organisational autonomy support, where students are given decision-making roles in classroom management, 2) cognitive autonomy support, in which teachers support student ownership in learning, and 3) procedural autonomy support, in which students have some choice in how they present their work.
  • Teach focuses on cognitive and procedural autonomy support.
  • Literature suggests that interest and achievement can be enhanced if a teacher provides the right type of autonomy support and meaningful choices regarding how students learn.
• The teacher provides students with opportunities to take on roles in the classroom.
  • The literature on cooperative learning demonstrates that assigning students to specific roles in a team, rotating the roles during the course of learning, and holding individuals and teams accountable is more effective in promoting student learning than independent learning.
  • Reciprocal teaching is an often-used approach involving assigning roles to teach reading comprehension. First, the teacher facilitates reading comprehension by asking students questions and modelling how to ask questions. Next, the teacher invites students to ask teacher-like questions to one another to support learning.
• Students volunteer to participate in the classroom.
  • The extent to which most students volunteer to participate stems from whether teachers have been successful at establishing a supportive classroom environment in which all students are comfortable and willing to take on roles in the classroom.

Perseverance

• Teachers need to encourage students to persevere through learning challenges by 1) helping them understand that their abilities and knowledge can be developed, 2) providing them with strategies for developing their abilities and knowledge, and 3) reassuring them that setbacks are an integral part of learning.
• Teachers should also encourage students to set learning goals for themselves and to persevere in their efforts to reach these goals.
• Teach includes three teacher behaviours that capture the extent to which teachers encourage perseverance in their students.
• The teacher acknowledges student effort, rather than focusing only on results, student intelligence, or natural abilities.
  • Effective teachers recognise student effort, not only the output of their work. In doing so, teachers can promote students’ ‘growth mindset’ in learning; that is, the belief that intelligence is malleable rather than a fixed attribute.
  • Teachers who help children see their ability as malleable (through their instructional practices) attribute success to hard work, encourage challenges, and generate strategies for improvement using behavioural practices that can promote a growth mindset in students.
  • Praise that focuses on student effort promotes learning and development.
  • Effective teachers give praise that acknowledges student effort toward mastering new skills and identifies these efforts explicitly, thus encouraging a growth mindset.
• The teacher has a positive attitude toward student challenges.
  • Effective teachers have a positive attitude toward students’ challenges and help them to understand that frustration and failure are a normal part of the learning process.
  • Student self-efficacy is an important driver of their approach to failure.
  • High levels of emotional support have been found to relate to higher student self-efficacy.
  • Effective teachers focus on the process of learning, not just the result.
• Teacher encourages goal setting.
  • By encouraging students to set goals for their learning, teachers effectively demonstrate that students need to: 1) identify goal-directed actions, 2) persist in engaging in the task despite obstacles, and 3) be encouraged to restart unfinished tasks even in the presence of more attractive alternatives.
  • Teachers also support students in their ability to delay gratification.

Social and collaborative skills

• Positive interactions with same-age peers contribute to students’ academic, psychosocial, behavioural, and emotional well-being.
• Through peer relationships and experience, children establish their concept of trust, practice critical social skills, develop a sense of their own identity, and develop perceptions of other people and the world, with effects that last into later life.
• Teachers guide peer culture by establishing classroom norms and producing an equitable social hierarchy within the classroom.
• Teachers can create social environments in which students engage with each other, resulting in enhanced learning.
• Teach includes three items to capture effective teacher behaviours that have been found to support student learning through peer interactions:
• The teacher promotes student collaboration through peer interaction.
  • Cooperative learning encourages students to share ideas, see problems from different perspectives, and practice oral, language, and social skills in small groups.
  • Working in groups can help students better understand tasks than working on tasks alone.
  • When paired with peers working at a slightly higher level of knowledge, scaffolding can occur; that is, the less-skilled student’s memory recall and use of learning strategies improve while also increasing the more-skilled student’s self-esteem.
• The teacher promotes students’ interpersonal skills, such as taking different perspectives, empathising, regulating emotion, and solving social problems.
  • Teachers play an important role in children’s social and emotional development by modelling positive behaviours, providing support to students to manage strong emotions, and managing naturally occurring power imbalances that can lead to aggression and bullying.
  • Teachers promote students’ interpersonal skills by facilitating their ability to take different perspectives (theory of mind [ToM] skills).
  • Effective teachers promote students’ ability to recognise and manage emotions.
• Students collaborate with one another through peer interaction.
  • Two processes of socialisation occur simultaneously in classrooms: teachers socialise students on how to behave in positive ways with one another, and students socialise each other on what is considered acceptable or not acceptable.
  • Warm peer relationships give students an opportunity to listen to each other and talk openly.
  • Peer interactions can also offer autonomy support, whereby working to understand each other’s viewpoints, explaining the relevance of school work to one another, and healthy negotiation as part of group work all help students to develop a sense of autonomy.

Conclusions

• There is a need to improve teacher education to move beyond a focus on teachers’ content knowledge to informing teachers what they need to do in the classroom and applying evidence-based core teacher practices.
• Once teachers are trained on these practices, Teach can support monitoring of their enactment in the classroom, supporting teachers in improving their practices and evaluating teachers’ progress.

This systematic review and meta-analysis investigated the efficacy of spelling interventions for the remediation of dyslexia and spelling deficits. Results show that treatment approaches using phonics and orthographic and morphological instruction had a moderate-to-high impact on spelling performance.

Authors: Katharina Galuschka, Ruth Görgen, Julia Kalmar, Stefan Haberstroh, Xenia Schmalz & Gerd Schulte-Körne

Source: Galuschka, K.; Görgen, R.; Kalmar, J.; Haberstroh, S.; Schmalz, X.; Schulte-Körne, G. (2020). Effectiveness of spelling interventions for learners with dyslexia: A meta-analysis and systematic review. Educational Psychologist, 55(1), 1–20. DOI: 10.1080/00461520.2019.1659794

This systematic review and meta-analysis investigated the efficacy of spelling interventions for the remediation of dyslexia and spelling deficits. The study included 34 controlled trials that evaluated spelling interventions in children, adolescents, and adults with dyslexia and spelling deficits. Results show that treatment approaches using phonics and orthographic and morphological instruction had a moderate-to-high impact on spelling performance. Significant influence of interventions that teach memorisation strategies to improve spelling could not be confirmed.

• Learning to spell is a challenging task.
• In most alphabetic orthographies, spelling skills are more difficult to acquire than reading skills.
• Difficulties with spelling (such as adding, omitting, or substituting letters or graphemes in written words) are a common indicator of specific learning disorders and a core characteristic of dyslexia.
• The term dyslexia refers to a pattern of learning difficulties characterised by problems with word recognition, decoding, and spelling.
• Poor spelling is an obstacle for text production in the same way that difficulties in word recognition are an impediment for reading comprehension.
• Spelling not only affects writing and compositional skills but is also closely linked to reading.
• In some phases, spelling is essential for reading because it trains phoneme awareness and the alphabetic principle. In other phases, reading boosts spelling because reading exposure leads to a richer lexicon of orthographic representations.
• Phonological awareness skills and the ability to segment spoken words into phonemes is an important precursor to reading and spelling acquisition.
• It is not surprising that phonological awareness interventions (including oral tasks for recognising phonemes within words, blending phonemes into words, segmenting a word into phonemes, eliminating a phoneme from a word, or adding a phoneme to a word) are often implemented to foster spelling and reading skills.
• Knowledge of phoneme–grapheme and grapheme–phoneme correspondences make up a self-teaching mechanism, which supports the acquisition of orthographic skills and fosters sight word reading (direct retrieval of phonology and semantics associated with a given written word form from the orthographic lexicon).
• Because of the strong influence of phoneme–grapheme and grapheme–phoneme correspondence skills on reading and spelling ability, research on reading and spelling instruction and intervention has predominantly focused on the acquisition of this fundamental knowledge.
• Such treatment approaches are often referred to as phonics interventions.
• Interventions that aim to help children with dyslexia and spelling deficits deal address the deviations from one-to-one mappings between phonemes and graphemes and provide explanations for these deviations by explicitly teaching morphological or orthographic knowledge.

Orthographic depth

• This is generally conceptualised as orthographic consistency: the presence of more than one pronunciation for a given letter or cluster of letters, or the presence of multiple spellings for one phoneme.
• Consistency thus measures the extent of adherence to the alphabetic principle, which varies greatly between orthographies.
• The Finnish language has been shown to be on the ‘consistent’ end of the orthographic consistency continuum, both in reading and spelling direction.
• English is on the opposite end of this continuum.
• The higher the number and complexity of rules, the number of exceptions, and sources of inconsistency of an orthography, the more difficult it is to impart this knowledge and to use it for the remediation of spelling deficits.
• For interventional research on spelling, it is important to know if there are treatment approaches that are less effective in one orthography than in another.

The present study

The purpose of the present review and meta-analysis is to extend the current knowledge about the effectiveness of spelling treatment approaches on reading and spelling performance of learners with dyslexia and spelling deficits.

Hypotheses:

1. Overall, it is expected that spelling intervention is effective.
2. It is expected that the effects are significant for phonics, orthographic, or morphological instructions.
3. It is expected that more severely impaired dyslexics would benefit more from a phonics approach compared to an orthographic or morphological intervention, and the efficacy of phonics instruction will decrease with age.
4. It is expected that for more consistent orthographies, the effect of spelling interventions on reading and spelling would be larger than for inconsistent orthographies.

Findings

• Of the studies evaluated, 34 met the inclusion criteria.
• In these 34 studies, the following treatment approaches were implemented: phonics intervention (n = 8), morphological intervention (n = 10), orthographic intervention (n = 7), memorisation intervention (n = 5), audio-visual cue intervention (n = 1), supportive software (n = 2), and assisted writing (n = 1).
• Results of a meta-analysis of 28 quantitative studies showed significant effect sizes of phonics, morphological, and orthographic interventions for reading and spelling outcomes.
• Effect sizes for spelling outcomes were substantially larger than for reading outcomes.
• In addition, a large and significant mean effect size for spelling outcomes was found for studies evaluating supportive software.
• The effectiveness of phonics interventions tended to decrease with age, and the effectiveness of morphological interventions tended to increase with age.
• The efficacy of phonics interventions decreased with increasing severity, whereas the efficacy of orthographic and morphological interventions increased with increasing severity.
• Interventions conducted in the classroom tended to show a smaller mean effect size than those interventions implemented in group or individual settings.

Conclusions

• It was found that spelling interventions are effective: Learners with dyslexia or spelling deficits who take part in a spelling intervention show better reading and spelling performance compared with children who received regular school practice or no spelling instruction.
• Mean effect sizes for spelling instructions involving phonics, orthographic, and morphological interventions are significantly greater than zero.
• It was not found that phonics instruction is more effective than morphological interventions in the early years of formal literacy instruction or for more severe spelling deficits.
• It seems likely that phonics and morphological and orthographic interventions are applicable across a wide age range.
• It is argued that graphotactic and orthographic–phonological spelling rules, as well as morphological instruction, should be provided as soon as children master the basic phoneme–grapheme and grapheme–phoneme mappings and are confronted with text material for which the basic phoneme–grapheme and grapheme–phoneme mappings would lead to spelling and reading mistakes.
• Support was not found for the hypothesis that with increasing orthographic consistency, the intervention effects would increase.
• The analysis revealed moderate effect sizes on spelling performance for interventions that were implemented in group settings, indicating that intervention in small groups could be an efficient alternative to individual instruction.

Adults with disabilities can be helped to learn and to improve their literacy skills by beginning with high expectations, building instruction around each individual’s goals, and using systematic, integrated instruction.

Authors: Susan R. Copeland, Jessica A. McCord, & Ashely Kruger

Source: Copeland, S.R., McCord, J.A., & Kruger, A. (2016). A review of literacy interventions for adults with extensive needs for supports. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 60(2), 173–184. DOI: 10.1002/jaal.548

Adults with disabilities can be helped to learn and to improve their literacy skills by beginning with high expectations, building instruction around each individual’s goals, and using systematic, integrated instruction.

• Acquiring literacy skills is critical for all adults.
• Literacy can empower an individual to be an active citizen in the democratic process, open up educational and employment opportunities that can lead to economic stability, facilitate health and well-being, create access to recreation and leisure activities, and enhance self-confidence.
• In this review, the population of individuals who require assistance across all aspects of their lives is considered. This includes individuals with intellectual disability (ID), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), or multiple disabilities.
• Instruction for adults should consider their typically pragmatic, problem-centred orientation to learning.
• Motivation, self-direction, and task/learning organisation all appear to play important roles in the experiences of most adult learners.
• Many adults with disabilities did not receive appropriate, individualised, systematic, and sustained literacy instruction while they were in school and therefore did not acquire literacy knowledge and skills.
• It is recognised that literacy learning is a lifelong process, not something that ends when compulsory education stops.
• Literacy encompasses both the skills needed to make meaning out of symbols (e.g. decoding and encoding text) and the broader uses of literacy within an individual’s life.

Present study

This review first investigates instructional interventions to teach acquisition of the skills needed to read. Second, it focuses on describing and evaluating the types of literacy instruction programmes available to adults. Therefore, it sought to describe the participants in this area of research, the types of literacy targets represented, the types of interventions used, and the outcomes of these interventions.

Participants In total, 169 adults aged between 18 and 57 years participated in the studies. Participants in 14 studies had a primary diagnosis of ID, and participants in three studies had a primary diagnosis of ASD.

Implications

• All the reviewed studies documented an improvement in participants’ literacy skills across widely varying interventions, demonstrating that individuals with extensive support needs can acquire new literacy skills well into adulthood.
• Comprehension is the purpose of reading; therefore, it is encouraging that over half of the studies reviewed focused on teaching reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge instead of focusing solely on word recognition.
• Teaching for comprehension from the beginning of word recognition instruction, and using instructional materials based on adults’ interests, are both likely to increase engagement and meaning making, and to facilitate comprehension.
• Strategies such as graphic organisers might also support short-term memory.
• Writing as a component of literacy instruction should be included.
• It is recommended to teach for transfer and generalisation by linking instruction to student’s interests and life.

This article examines current trends in education in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, high enrolment rates after the introduction of free basic education, the challenges of retaining pupils in the system, poor levels of attainment, and prevailing factors in the region that affect the teaching process and profession.

Author: Sylvia C. Kalindi

Source: Kalindi, S.C. (2015). Education in Sub-Saharan Africa. In: James D. Wright (editor-in-chief), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Vol 7. Oxford: Elsevier. 198–209. ISBN: 9780080970868.

This article examines current trends in education in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, high enrolment rates after the introduction of free basic education, the challenges of retaining pupils in the system, poor levels of attainment, and prevailing factors in the region that affect the teaching process and profession.

• Education has many benefits, such as improved health, increased per capita income, and sustained democracies.
• Inasmuch as education is a human right, only some people in Sub-Saharan Africa have the privilege of being educated.
• Most children (especially girls) are still deprived of the right to education.

Background

• The 1960s and early 1970s marked a post-independence era for most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, which were characterised by economic boom.
• Later, due to economic crises, governments were forced to make choices that restricted public education.
• As a result, developing countries experienced a sharp decline in the quality of education provided in institutions of learning from the 1980s onwards.
• The World Bank (2009) emphasised the need for good quality, free primary education, stating it as the basis of governments’ poverty reduction strategies.

Learning achievement/educational quality

• High enrolment because of the abolition of school tuition fees in Sub-Saharan Africa have compromised the quality of basic education.
• Student competency in numeracy and literacy as well as national examinations have provided good indicators of quality regarding school attainment.
• While literacy improves with schooling, the correlation between the two is far from perfect in most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• For example, in Tanzania, 1 in 5 (20%) pupils who finish primary education cannot read at 2^nd grade level in Kiswahili and only 5 in 10 (50%) children can read in English on completion of primary school.
• Results from regional assessments have highlighted poor learning outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• In general, it has been observed that large numbers of children who reach the final grade in primary school have weak literacy and numeracy skills.
• Factors that may explain poor attainment levels in the Sub-Saharan region include teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms, poor teaching, primary language interference, lack of printed material in local languages, illiterate parents, and lack of parental support in the learning process.

Teachers and factors affecting the teaching process

• The way teachers are recruited, trained, and deployed across schools is vital for improving learning outcomes.
• The introduction of free basic education in Sub-Saharan Africa automatically resulted in more children in classrooms thereby increasing the pupil–teacher ratio.
• This situation is compounded by significant teacher shortages, especially in rural areas.
• Trained teachers are in short supply in many countries in the region and the teacher shortage is often an indication of inadequate investment in education.
• At the primary level, teacher education is often fragmented, incomplete, and in some cases non-existent.
• For many countries in the region, investment in education is inadequate because governments depend heavily on external funding to support basic education policy and practice.
• Due to financial constraints, some countries in the region cannot deploy teachers straight out of colleges and universities for a long time.
• The use of unqualified teachers brings severe deficiencies that outweigh the financial advantages.
• Those with limited professional education are likely to provide lower quality education, and the fact that they are deployed in rural, understaffed schools means that children’s attainment levels are adversely affected, further emphasising rural–urban inequalities.
• However, several countries are making progress toward having and recruiting well-trained teachers in primary schools.
• However, many educated teachers do not demonstrate the desired teaching approaches.
• Possible reasons for this could be the poor teaching conditions that teachers are exposed to, such as lack of accommodation, physically inadequate classrooms, a lack of furniture and teaching materials, and a high pupil–teacher ratio, all of which make it impossible to apply their newly learned teaching skills.
• Due to low salaries and poor conditions of service in most of Sub-Sharan Africa, the status of the teaching profession is declining.
• This ultimately leads to severe retention problems coupled with high rates of absenteeism.

Conclusions

• The abolition of primary school tuition fees in the mid-1990s has had a positive effect on allowing more children access to basic education.
• The increased number of pupils leads to challenges such as a lack of classrooms and appropriate furniture, a lack of resources such as student books and teachers’ manuals, and lack of trained teachers all of which ultimately lead to questions about the quality of the education offered.
• A further issue identified was the lack of morale experienced by teachers due to low salaries, lack of incentives for progression in the profession, and generally poor working conditions.
• This led to high rates of attrition and absenteeism, and to fill the gap governments resorted to cheap labour in the form of volunteers and contract teachers.
• To fully achieve universal primary education, it is cardinal for governments in the Sub-Saharan region to establish good collective bargaining structures and ultimately to allocate more funding for the construction of new classrooms.
• Teacher training also requires enhancing to ensure the presence of qualified teaching personnel who can teach not only academic but also vocational subjects to prepare those who drop out with some life skills.
• The general working conditions of teachers (including salaries, housing, and other incentives) needed to attract teachers to rural areas should be improved.
• The in-service component of the upgrading programme should be closely monitored and consistently evaluated to allow for adequate mentoring of students.

This literature review examines current evidence on policy interventions for adults with low literacy and numeracy proficiencies to identify what has so far proven to motivate adults to join and persist in basic literacy and numeracy learning. The author identifies three approaches which seem promising in helping to address individual learners’ needs: 1) adapting instruction to learners’ needs by means of regular assessment (formative assessments); 2) complementary e-learning (blended learning); and 3) contextualisation of basic skills provision both at work and home (workplace learning and family literacy). The central challenge is to apply this evidence.

Author: Hendrickje Catriona Windisch

Source: Windisch, H.C. (2016). How to motivate adults with low literacy and numeracy skills to engage and persist in learning: A literature review of policy interventions. Int.Rev.Educ., 62, 279–297. DOI: 10.1007/s11159-016-9553-x

This literature review examines current evidence on policy interventions for adults with low literacy and numeracy proficiencies to identify what has so far proven to motivate adults to join and persist in basic literacy and numeracy learning. The author identifies three approaches which seem promising in helping to address individual learners’ needs: 1) adapting instruction to learners’ needs by means of regular assessment (formative assessments); 2) complementary e-learning (blended learning); and 3) contextualisation of basic skills provision both at work and home (workplace learning and family literacy). The central challenge is to apply this evidence.

• Individuals with weak literacy and numeracy proficiencies are more likely to be in low-paid jobs or unemployed, tend to have poorer health and civic engagement levels, and are less likely to improve their skills through adult education and training.
• Interest in basic skills education for adults has increased in member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
• A considerable number of adults in participating countries possess only limited literacy and numeracy skills.
• Often those concerned will have performed poorly at school and due to this experience have a negative perception of education; they may lack awareness of their deficiencies or be embarrassed to admit them.
• Even for those interested in tackling their weaknesses, it may be hard to translate that interest into action.
• For basic skills programmes to be effective, they need to motivate adults to take part, convey basic skills, and encourage learner persistence. Moreover, the acquired basic skills need to be sustained through use and applied in good jobs.

Basic skills and employment

• Per-capita income is higher in countries that have large proportions of adults who reach the highest levels of literacy and numeracy proficiency.
• Basic skills play a central role in enabling workers to adapt to technical and economic change and to advance professionally.
• Individuals with lower numeracy and literacy proficiencies are more likely to report poor health, to believe they have little impact on political processes, and participate less in associative or volunteer activities.

Building awareness and sustaining motivation

• Adults with low literacy and numeracy skills are less likely to engage in adult education and training.
• It is difficult to reach those most in need of basic skills support.
• Motivation needs to be developed partly by building awareness of weak basic skills.
• This can be substantially assisted by developing greater public awareness of the implications of weak basic skills, the scope for skills improvements, and information and guidance about learning opportunities among the adults directly concerned and their immediate contacts.
• Local social networking can help reach those who require basic skills support.
• Using financial incentives to motivate adults to engage in basic skills learning yields mixed results: whilst encouraging participation of adults intrinsically interested in learning, it does not often yield positive outcomes among participants extrinsically motivated by financial incentives or requirement.
• Support, guidance, and follow-up can reduce dropout rates.
• Evidence shows the positive impact of assistance with childcare, transport, access to social services, and measures to avoid wage loss and unemployment during course participation.
• Evidence also underlines the importance of initial skills assessment and induction at the start of a programme when learners are most likely to withdraw, together with continued guidance throughout the programme.
• When adults withdraw from a course, this is sometimes only a temporary response to life pressures. Training providers therefore need to remain in touch with these individuals, seek to support them during the break (perhaps with distance learning), and entice them back to complete the programme.

The teaching profession

• Literacy and numeracy teachers need to be well-prepared.
• Positive attitudes among teachers and a personalised focus on learners can make a positive difference.
• Volunteer staff often play an important role in literacy and numeracy teaching.
• Volunteers are often familiar with course participants and their life circumstances, and their support can be vital. But since they may lack necessary pedagogical skills, their support needs to be supported by at least minimal training.

Conclusions

• The literature suggests that understanding the various learning motivations of adults with literacy and numeracy challenges (as well as their barriers to learning) is crucial for the design of outreach strategies and courses that motivate adults to engage and persist in learning.
• To increase participation and learner persistence, assistance with childcare, transport, measures to avoid wage loss and unemployment during course participation, and guidance services can all make a difference.
• Formative assessment to adjust instruction to the learners’ needs has been found to be particularly helpful.
• Contextualised approaches to basic skills learning, such as combined basic and vocational skills training, family literacy programmes, and basic skills provision in the workplace, can help engage those with negative feelings about classroom learning.

This study sought to explore the integration of socially constructed pedagogy in adult literacy classes. The findings show a concentration of school-based reading and writing literacy skills, with minimal emphasis on the application of these skills in real life. The study concluded that the ideal platform for integrating socially constructed pedagogy in adult literacy classes is by adhering to the adult learning principle of beginning from the perspective of the adult learners, rather than applying a one-size-fits all approach.

Author: Noah Kenny Sichula

Source: Sichula, N.K. (2018). Integrating the socially constructed pedagogy in non-school based adult literacy classes. Multidisciplinary Journal of Language and Social Sciences Education, 1(1), 243–278.

This study sought to explore the integration of socially constructed pedagogy in adult literacy classes. The study focused on teaching farming literacies to small scale farmers and sought to answer two research questions: 1) how do adult literacy learning facilitators socially construct pedagogy? and 2) how is socially constructed pedagogy integrated into teaching about farming literacies? This study followed a qualitative research approach and data was collected through face-to-face interviews and class observations. The findings show there was a concentration on school-based reading and writing literacy skills with minimal emphasis on the application of these skills in real life. In addition, not all facilitators were able to socially construct pedagogy because they lacked appropriate training. For those who were able to construct pedagogy, they applied it in a situated manner, largely characterised by locally-generated resources and practices. This approach was seemingly responsible for fostering a sense of belonging and ownership of the teaching and learning activities experienced by the adult learners. It was concluded that the ideal platform for integrating socially constructed pedagogy in adult literacy classes is to adhere to the adult learning principle of beginning from the perspective of the adult learners, rather than applying a one-size-fits all pedagogy.

• The focus of many studies on literacy pedagogy has concentrated on school-based pedagogy for children and in higher education.
• Non-school-based adult literacy learning is ingrained with a type of pedagogy that is mediated by the sociocultural context of the adult learners.
• Research has linked the success of adult literacy learning programmes in most rural parts of developing countries to developing pedagogy that should be based on the everyday literacy practices of the people.
• Adult literacy learning should refer to teaching adult learners to improve their already existing literacy practices and not to teaching to them discrete skills such as reading and writing.
• Socially constructed pedagogy should relate to the creative, innovative uses of locally-situated resources to support teaching and learning.

Present study

The purpose of this study was to explore how socially constructed pedagogy was incorporated in non-school-based adult literacy classes in the Mkushi District of Central Zambia.

Research questions:

1. How do adult literacy learning facilitators socially construct pedagogy?
2. How is socially constructed pedagogy integrated into teaching about farming literacies?

Methods

The research sites and participants were selected through purposive sampling. The rationale for the purposive selection of Mkushi District was based on its concentrated farming activities within the entire Central Province. The research participants were adult literacy learning facilitators who were interviewed and observed. The collected data was analysed using inductive thematic analysis.

The conceptualisation and provision of adult literacy learning in Zambia

• In Zambia (as well many other countries) there is a narrow conceptualisation that literacy simply means the skills of reading and writing.
• Essentially, there is compelling evidence from research regarding the importance of conceptualising and applying literacy as a social practice.
• This approach produces considerable progress in improving literacy practices among learners compared to the discrete skills-based approach.
• Sadly, the new adult literacy learning curriculum in Zambia has simply considered adult literacy as the ability to read, write, and perform numerical calculations.
• It is important for all adult literacy practitioners in the country to realise that the 21^st century paradigm of literacy and learning has emerged from socio-culturally based research.
• This presents the following ideas: 1) multi-literacies as opposed to a single view of literacy, and 2) teaching and learning are learner-centred as opposed to teacher-centred and have been found beneficial for improving both teaching and learning.

Pedagogy

• Traditionally, pedagogy has been associated with the teaching and learning processes of children.
• The meaning of the concept is said to be composed of two Greek words, paidos (child) and agogus (leader).
• To consider pedagogy as being only concerned with teaching children is limited in content and scope.
• Therefore, the concept of andragogy was developed to explain teaching and learning related to adults. However, its definition and meaning are not clear; thus, pedagogy is used for all categories of learners (children, youths, and adults).
• Literature on the conceptualisation of pedagogy reveals two dominant views: 1) pedagogy is considered only in relation to teaching, and 2) pedagogy is considered a science concerned with teaching processes associated with all learners.
• The emphasis on learner-centred pedagogy reflects important implications for the understanding of how socially constructed pedagogy can be integrated into non-school-based adult literacy learning.
• Adult educators should apply socially developed pedagogy from the perspective of their adult learners.
• Thus, adult educators are expected to possess two forms of knowledge associated with pedagogy: content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge.
• Content knowledge is understood as knowledge of the subject area possessed and ordered within the mind of a teacher.
• Adult educators should use their understanding to help adult learners in generating new knowledge and understanding.
• Pedagogical knowledge relates to the knowledge that is essential to all educators for effective teaching and learning.
• The nature of pedagogical knowledge is made up of knowledge on general instructional methods that is unique to educators and teachers.
• It provides an understanding of what teachers know about teaching and what they teach to specific learners.
• It also encompasses the teacher’s knowledge of the learners in terms of their abilities, learning strategies, aspirations, and prior knowledge.
• This knowledge is also based on understanding ways of presenting information through explanations, illustrations, examples, and demonstrations to enable others to understand the subject matter.
• It is also associated with understanding aspects related to learning difficulties.
• Trained educators are expected to construct pedagogy creatively and innovatively based on the prevailing learning circumstances or situation.

Socially constructed pedagogy

• This relates to the use of material and any other useful resources found in the learning context to support teaching and learning.
• There is a global shift in emphases from teacher-centred to learner-centred pedagogy, banking education to posing problems, and surface learning to deep learning.
• Adult educators are expected to have a clear knowledge of the adult learners in terms of their occupations, status, motivations, and knowledge of the subject matter to meet the goals of each learner.
• Knowledge and understanding of the content are the two most important elements that facilitate the shaping of goals and objectives to achieve the desired changes in learners.
• Beneficial life experiences play an important role in shaping pedagogy and aid the success of an educational activity.
• Pedagogy should be considered in situated terms and specific to the learning goals.

Theoretical framework of the present study

• This study was underpinned by two sociocultural learning theories: the social practice view of literacy and the theory of social constructivism (for both, learning and pedagogy are socially situated).
• The social practice theory views literacy from a broader perspective as socially situated practices.
• According to this theory, literacy practices develop socially within the cultural context of the people and are mediated by language and symbols.
• The implication of viewing literacy as social practices (LSP) to this study is that the literacy taught in the adult literacy classes should be viewed as situated literacies rather than universal literacy skills.
• Social constructivism is a theory grounded in informal situated learning practices and regards learning as social processes mediated by language and culture.
• The learning context familiar to the learner is important in enhancing learning and can be achieved by setting a zone of proximal development (ZDP).
• This refers to an activity-based environment in which the educator or peers who are more knowledgeable assist learners to achieve what they cannot do on their own.
• Pedagogically, adult learning should be characterised by adult learners sharing their language and culture with their educators who adopt a more flexible and less authoritative role.
• Practically, educators should organise adult learners into pairs or groups to perform tasks and offer the necessary support to adult learners at any point.
• Informal learning practices should be essential for accommodating adult learners’ interests.
• Instructions should be learner focused, learner-goal based, and possibly learner–educator co-constructed.
• The advantage of using a social and group interactive learning process is that it provides opportunities for adult learners to engage in discussions through which they may construct new knowledge.
• It can be said that educators using this model scaffold learning by creating opportunities for the genuine engagement of adult learners in the learning processes.

Conclusions

• Adult learners are self-directed, experientially based learners, problem-centred, task-centred, and life-centred learners.
• People engaged in adult literacy learning are essentially engaged in the generation of knowledge situated in the context within which it is generated.
• Social learning is important for the construction and application of socially situated pedagogy.

This article presents a study conducted in Katete District, Eastern Zambia that explored 1) the pedagogical practices used in this context, and 2) facilitators’ choices of certain teaching methods. Literacy classes were dominated by the teacher-centred lecture method. Researchers found that lecture-based instruction, when applied in a participatory manner, could produce considerable gains in learning. However, the authors contend that many learners would have benefited more from a learner-centred approach.

Authors: Noah Kenny Sichula & Gerhard Genis

Source: Sichula, N.K.; Genis, G. (2019). Pedagogical practices in non-formal adult literacy classes in Zambia. International Review of Education, 65, 879–903. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-019-09808-y

In Zambia, adult literacy education is mainly provided in the form of non-formal literacy classes with a general emphasis on the economic aim of alleviating poverty. Exploring the pedagogical practices used in this context and facilitators’ choices of certain teaching methods, this article presents a study that was conducted in Katete District, Eastern Zambia. Data was collected through interviews, observations, and focus group discussions with literacy managers, facilitators, and adult learners. Literacy classes were dominated by the teacher-centred lecture method. Researchers found that lecture-based instruction, when applied in a participatory manner, could produce considerable gains in learning. However, the authors contend that many learners would have benefited more from a learner-centred approach. In sum, the authors conclude that the pedagogical practices applied fell short of international pedagogical standards for both adult and non-formal learning.

• Non-formal adult learning refers to meaningful lifelong learning activities that are organised and conducted outside the formal education framework and meet the learning goals of adults in different contexts.
• In Zambia, adult literacy education is mainly provided in the form of non-formal literacy classes, with a general emphasis on the economic aim of alleviating poverty.
• In practice, both provision and focus are guided by geographical location.
• The government of the Republic of Zambia has directed that learner-centred pedagogy should be used in all adult literacy classes in the country.
• Our rationale for investigating the application of pedagogy in adult literacy classes was twofold: first, literacy is an important aspect of everyday communication and human development as a whole and second, pedagogy plays an important role in both the acquisition of new literacies and the improvement of literacy practices.

Present study

This article presents the findings of a study on pedagogical practices used in non-formal adult literacy classes in Katete District, Zambia. The aim of this study was to explore pedagogical practices in relation to international standards of non-formal and adult learning pedagogies and from the perspective of literacy as social practice (LSP), whereby reading and writing are embedded in the real-life contexts of the learners.

Research questions:

1. What pedagogical practices are used in non-formal adult literacy education in Zambia?
2. How do the facilitators select the teaching and learning methods?

Methods

The study followed a qualitative research methodology. Participants were literacy managers, facilitators, and adult learners in two literacy programmes: the government-run literacy programme and the Tikondane literacy programme. Literacy managers and facilitators were interviewed, classes were observed, and adult learners participated in learner-focused discussions in Cicewa. The data were analysed through inductive thematic analysis.

Pedagogical perspectives that framed the study

Standards of adult learning pedagogy

• Adult learning pedagogy is rooted in instrumental, humanistic, experiential, social, and transformational learning theories.
• Adult learners are characterised by diverse backgrounds, needs, and aspirations.
• In principle, adult learning is centred more on individual need than on collective or group learning needs.
• Successful learning is only possible when educators carefully design and select teaching and learning strategies to address individual needs while remaining committed to the teaching and learning process.
• Educators are expected to use interactive pedagogical strategies and identify individual learners’ difficulties, abilities, and prior learning experiences. Concurrently, they also decide how best to help individual learners in their quest to acquire new knowledge and skills.
• Effective adult learning requires a teaching and learning approach which incorporates participatory pedagogies that are learner centred.
• Learner-centred pedagogy fosters a collaborative approach to teaching and learning, in which learners are valued as partners in the generation of knowledge, not merely as recipients of information provided by their teachers.
• Educators should create a teaching and learning environment that encourages learners to actively engage in class, prompting them through self-directed and reflective learning to consider how they wish to utilise the skills and knowledge acquired in class.
• Learner-centred pedagogy reflects a democratic approach to teaching and learning in which learners take ownership of the learning process.

Standards of non-formal learning pedagogy

• The idea behind non-formal learning is to promote learner-centred, pedagogical environments for active learning that are socio-culturally appropriate and that match the interests and aspirations of learners.
• The instruction methods used in non-formal learning are better adapted to learners than those used in formal learning, because they operate on the principle of flexibility and occur in a variety of settings with learners of different orientations.
• A learner-centred pedagogy in a non-formal learning environment involves creating and increasing opportunities for learners to actively participate in class while supporting them to conduct purposive, self-directed, learning activities.

Conclusions

• While some facilitators discussed teaching from the perspective of learners’ needs and using participatory methods, in reality most lessons were teacher-centred, consisting of dictation and drill exercises.
• The idea that literacy learners are illiterate and ignorant was an influencing factor in the facilitators’ choice of instruction methods.
• They considered teacher-centred lecture instruction the best method for teaching literacy to adult learners who were unable to read and write.
• Some facilitators preferred a combination of lecture and participatory methods.
• However, even with this combination, the aim was to enhance learners’ understanding of the lesson and not to help them apply what was being taught.
• The study concluded that little is occurring with regard to the application of the learner-centred pedagogy to meet the expectations of the 2012 curriculum framework on pedagogy in adult literacy learning in Zambia.
• Thus, authors of the study suggest the application of a holistic approach to adult literacy learning programmes in Zambia.
• This would include reconceptualising literacy in line with the 21^st-century view of literacy as a multiple situated practice and aligning instructional methods with the roles of learners and their learning goals.

The purpose of this case series was to explore whether adults who did not have the opportunity to acquire reading skills during childhood were able to do so rapidly if trained with an adequate literacy programme. After 14 weeks of training with a new, optimised, literacy course based on cognitive research, 6 out of 8 participants were able to read words they had never encountered.

Authors: Régine Kolinsky, Isabel Leite, Cristina Carvalho, Ana Franco & José Morais

Source: Kolinsky, R., Leite, I., Carvalho, C., Franco, A., & Morais, J. (2019). Completely illiterate adults can learn to decode in 3 months. Read Writ, 31, 649–677 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-017-9804-7

The purpose of this case series was to explore whether adults who did not have the opportunity to acquire reading skills during childhood were able to do so rapidly if trained with an adequate literacy programme. After 14 weeks of training with a new, optimised, literacy course based on cognitive research, 6 out of 8 participants were able to read words they had never encountered. They also showed enhanced phonemic sensitivity and phonological memory. Thus, there is no major plasticity impediment preventing the rapid eradication of illiteracy in adults.

• According to the most recent worldwide data for 2005–2014, 15% of people aged at least 15 years lacked any reading and writing skills (UNESCO, 2016).
• This high rate is mainly explained by the lack of adequate learning opportunities.
• Due to socioeconomic or cultural reasons, many people do not attend school during childhood, or they only go for some months or years on an irregular basis.
• Literacy and schooling are considered human rights, thanks to the growing recognition that adult illiteracy often condemns the individual to poverty, poor health, and social exclusion (not only the adults but also their children).
• Although reading can clearly be taught to adults, only a few learners become fluent readers at the end of a literacy course.
• The available evidence does not support the assumption that there is a sensitive period for reading development during childhood or even until at least middle adulthood.
• The scarcity of information in the majority of adult literacy studies concerning instruction methods, time devoted to instruction, and the level of ability before and after instruction, makes it difficult to assess the effects of literacy programmes rigorously.

Present study

The authors of the present study elaborated a new literacy course aimed at optimising reading acquisition and applied it to a small group of completely illiterate women, while fully controlling the instruction provided and repeatedly measuring its effects.

The literacy course principles

Literacy for illiterate adults (LIA) is based on the phonics approach, with four overarching principles:

1. To develop comprehension of the alphabetic principle; namely, that letters (alone or in combination [graphemes]) stand for phonemes;
2. To teach the orthographic code; namely, the correspondences between graphemes and phonemes (GPCs) in a progressive way from the simplest to the most complex, capitalising on current knowledge about the possible stumbling blocks in reading acquisition;
3. To teach lower- and upper-case letters in parallel; and
4. To combine reading and handwriting activities systematically.

The literacy course outline

• The phonics approach is reported to elicit the best results among both children and adults.
• Reading an alphabetic script is contingent on understanding the alphabetic principle, while phonemic awareness develops hand in hand with the acquisition of this principle as illustrated by the fact that it is virtually absent in illiterate adults.
• LIA combines opportunities for insight and learning of GPCs of increasing level of difficulty, which is the best way to teach word decoding.
• Initially, student attention is directed to the phonological length of word pairs displaying an incongruent relation to the size of the referents as well as to the number of syllables included in these words, and their associated articulatory gestures.
• Next, LIA relates the notion to the length of written words, illustrating that phonologically longer words need (in principle) more letters to be written than phonologically shorter words.
• After exercising this approximate correspondence, each syllable is isolated in turn, illustrating the left-right directionality of reading/writing (a notion that illiterate adults also lack).
• Still in the first lesson, phonemic awareness and the understanding of the alphabetic principle are then promoted by insisting simultaneously on sounds, articulatory gestures, and letters.
• The understanding of the alphabetic principle is then tested using new consonant–vowel (CV) combinations.
• To decode implies to master the language’s orthographic code.
• The order of GPCs teaching in LIA obeys five principles:
• Phoneme accessibility: from the easiest to the most difficult
• Degree of consistency: from higher to lower
• Grapheme complexity: from simpler to more complex
• Visual difficulty of letter recognition: from letter pairs of higher to lower visual discriminability
• Phonological structure: from simpler to more complex syllabic environment
• The course is subdivided into 17 modules of increasing complexity; each module is taught in 2 or 3 lessons for a total of 41 lessons and corresponds to the introduction of 1 (or more) GPCs, concepts, or orthographic rules.
• For instance, the first two modules (five lessons) focus exclusively on the acquisition of the alphabetic principle and therefore only present simple letters.
• Inconsistent GPCs are introduced in Module 3 together with unstressed vowels and a new structure.
• Some simple contextual and positional rules are introduced in Modules 4–6, together with simple digraphs.
• New graphemes and syllabic structures are added progressively; however, plosives and mirrored letters do not appear before Modules 11 and 12, respectively.
• The 17^th and final module is devoted to highly inconsistent letter(s).
• The third overarching principle of LIA (that lower- and upper-case letters are taught in parallel) was motivated by the fact that mastering the alphabet requires the acquisition of abstract letter units to consider as identical symbols that may be physically quite different.
• The last overarching principle (that reading and handwriting are taught and exercised jointly throughout the course) was not meant to allow written production to develop substantially in the very short instruction that was used. However, training handwriting may benefit reading acquisition.

Assessing the effectiveness of LIA

• LIA was applied to 8 illiterate women for 3 lessons (of 2 h each) per week over 14 weeks.
• Each lesson (except the first) began with revision.
• Students also received homework.
• Participants were tested before, during, and after the course.
• Tests included students’ letter and complex grapheme knowledge, their ability to match letters across case, their reading and meta-phonological abilities, and phonological memory.

Conclusions and implications

• Overall, the LIA course yielded a significant improvement in almost all the evaluated abilities.
• Throughout the learning period, there was a steady increase in the knowledge of simple letters and to a lesser (but still significant) extent of complex graphemes.
• At any test session, performance improved only for the studied GPCs. For these, progress was rapid and was maintained at further testing sessions.
• The students (entirely illiterate at the beginning) clearly learned to decode, an indispensable condition to becoming autonomous readers.
• Many new words were read perfectly post-intervention, which shows that students developed a genuine decoding ability rather than resorting to whole-word pattern recognition.
• Nevertheless, as expected, words that had been presented in the classroom were read slightly better than new words, although the difference post-intervention was not significant.
• Reading new pseudowords remained slightly more difficult than reading new words, and clearly more difficult than reading words that had been presented in the classroom.
• Scores in meta-phonological tasks increased through successive test sessions.
• Performance on syllable deletion and phonemic sensitivity began to improve even before learning to read, which is consistent with the idea that those abilities may benefit from such learning whilst not depending on it.
• Large individual differences were observed in participant learning curves, with individual performance remaining near 0 or increasing by 60% or even more than 90%, in particular for knowledge of complex graphemes and word reading.
• Only one student failed to learn to read at all; she was the oldest (64 years old) and least motivated of the participants.
• The present results clearly show that a total of 82 h training delivered throughout 3 months is insufficient to progress beyond slow and effortful decoding.
• This is particularly relevant considering adult literacy courses are often quite limited in instruction time.
• Longer and more intensive training is most likely required to become a fluent reader.

This article briefly reviews progress in adult literacy, touches on existing perspectives on literacy, and illustrates four recent sources of information useful in the revitalised agenda offered by the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By integrating literacy into the SDGs, literacy researchers can reveal the channels through which literacy can contribute to social welfare and transformation.

Author: David Post

Source: Post, D. (2016). Adult literacy benefits? New opportunities for research into sustainable development. Int Rev Educ, 62, 751–770. DOI 10.1007/s11159-016-9602-5

This article briefly reviews progress in adult literacy, touches on existing perspectives on literacy, and illustrates four recent sources of information useful in the revitalised agenda offered by the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult competencies (PIAAC) study conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Values Survey (WVS), and the World Bank’s Skills Toward Employment and Productivity (STEP) study are now available to researchers who wish to link educational change with attitudinal and behavioural change. Another important resource are the emerging data on mobile learning. By integrating literacy into the SDGs, literacy researchers can reveal the channels through which literacy can contribute to social welfare and transformation.

• While literacy rates increased sharply during the 1960s and 1970s, progress toward the elimination of adult illiteracy proved elusive over the years since the World Conference on Education for All (EFA) in Jomtien (1990) and the World Education Forum in Dakar (2000).
• As the 2015 EFA Global Monitoring Report demonstrates, only a few countries with comparable data have succeeded in reducing adult illiteracy by 50% since 2000.
• Literacy seems to be diminishing within the world agenda for change.
• Even using 1990 as a reference point (rather than 2000), estimates by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) show there has been a far smaller reduction in adult illiteracy than was hoped in low-income countries with comparable indicators of adult literacy.
• According to a UNESCO survey (2015, 2016), more women across cohorts over time could correctly read a sentence; however, this appears to be simply because more girls are finishing primary school as opposed to more adults learning to read.
• In most countries, literacy within a birth cohort stagnated or even declined over time.
• The stalled progress of literacy programmes has been accompanied by two newer conceptual developments: one stressing the varied contextual meaning and purposes of literacy, and the other viewing all educational change through the lens of human rights rather than as factor of economic production.

Sustainable Development Goals

• UN SDGs integrate literacy into broader global progress than was the case with previous goals.
• Although adult literacy receives little special attention within SDG 4 (‘Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’), target 4.6 aims for a substantial proportion of adults to achieve literacy and numeracy (UN 2015).
• Target 4.7 focuses on the social consequences of education and on education as prerequisite for progress towards other goals.

Cross-national surveys available for a revitalised literacy agenda

• From 2010 to 2014, a consortium of social researchers designed and conducted the sixth wave of the World Values Survey (WVS 2014).
• Survey respondents who self-reported as literate were much more likely to claim they were in good or excellent health, compared with those who said they were illiterate.
• In addition, literate individuals who interact in literate environments typically place trust in a wider circle of people than people who report themselves to be illiterate.
• Beyond trusting one’s own neighbourhood, respondents who were literate were more often trusting of people of different religions and nationalities.
• Those who identified as literate were more likely to prioritise the environment over economic growth.
• By contrast, respondents who did not identify as literate were much more likely to favour economic growth over environmental protection.
• The PIAAC Round 1 survey was conducted from 2008 to 2013 in 24 countries.
• Like the patterns that emerged from the WVS, the PIAAC survey shows that individual literacy levels are associated with possible social consequences such as political efficacy and civic engagement.
• Greater literacy skill levels have independent positive effects on such outcomes, such as adult willingness to engage in the political process, political efficacy, trust, and good health.
• A third, newly available source of information for cross-national investigations into the benefits of literacy is the STEP study (World Bank 2014).
• Respondents’ reports of the amount of text they read were related to their increased openness to new experiences.

Mobile reading and M-learning

• Researchers can now use the experience of mobile reading to investigate consequences relevant to the SDGs.
• For example, mobile phone activities and learning exercises, when added to an adult education programme in Niger, improved outcomes for reading and numeracy significantly more than among students in programmes without mobile phone exercises.
• Mobile phones have the potential to alter the amount of reading and the type of reading that takes place.
• Mobile phone-related reading is less likely to be national and more likely to be global in terms of origin of material.
• According to a UNESCO survey (2014), most respondents reported enjoying reading even more after they started reading on their mobile phones, regardless of their initial attitudes toward reading.

Directions for future research on the SDGs and the benefits of literacy

• Researchers should welcome the new vision on the consequences of literacy implicit in the SDGs.
• The SDGs can refocus research attention on the consequences of education, including the consequences of literacy.
• It is important to uncover ways in which adult literacy benefits both individuals and their societies.
• The Dakar Framework for Action argued that ‘the vital role literacy plays in lifelong learning, sustainable livelihoods, good health, active citizenship, and the improved quality for individuals, communities and societies must be more widely recognised’ (WEF 2000).

There are approximately 750 million illiterate adults globally who could (in principle) learn fluent reading. However, adult literacy programmes have thus far performed poorly. The author posits the hypothesis that all people become dyslexic toward new alphabets at the approximate age of 19 years, and the ability to read new alphabets fluently decreases with age.

Author: Helen Abadzi

Source: Abadzi, H. (2019). Neo-literate adult dyslexia and literacy policies: A neurocognitive research review of a curious unexplored phenomenon. Current and Critical Issues in Curriculum, Learning and Assessment, in progress-reflection nro 29, IBE/2019/WP/CD/29.

There are approximately 750 million illiterate adults worldwide who could (in principle) learn fluent reading. However, adult literacy programmes have thus far performed poorly. In this paper, the influence of some neurocognitive factors on poor adult reading performance is explored. Automatic readers of a script detect letters and words effortlessly and involuntarily. Adults learning a new script detect letters slowly, may make mistakes, understand little, soon abandon the task, and may also forget what they have learned. When a neo-literate person (a person who does not yet know how to read the alphabet) glances at a text, they may only see a jumble of letters and may only process some of the features. They must activate reading consciously and sound out each letter. Their difficulties are perceptual, and interviews suggest that perceptual distortions may continue for decades. This phenomenon termed ‘neo-literate adult dyslexia’ (NAD) has received little attention to date. The problem occurs in the brain, and may originate at the early stages of development of the parietal cortex at the dorsal reading path, which constricts short-term visual memory. Parts of the visual cortex (the striate cortex V1, and perhaps the extra-striate cortex V4) may also be involved. Deficits affect the ventral path that provides parallel processing and direct print-to-meaning reading. Some neuronal groups may have a sensitive period that affects the capacity to collect frequency data and to integrate the appropriate features of letters and words. Then, adults do not learn to perceive letter shapes and words as easily as most children do. These difficulties for adults are not linguistic. Dysfluent readers simply cannot decipher the symbols within a sufficient time to acquire the meaning of texts (or they do so after considerable conscious visual effort). Some adults may become better readers than others. However, there seems to be a correlation between learning a script at increasingly later ages and worse reading outcomes, although no data exists to map this trajectory. To explore this curious phenomenon, this review brings together a range of insights from of neurocognitive research, notably studies on a) perceptual learning, b) neurocognitive studies aimed at dyslexic children, c) studies of adult suffering from brain damage that causes alexia, and d) performance of adult literacy programmes. The author posits the hypothesis that all people may become dyslexic toward new alphabets from the approximate age of 19 years, and that ability to read new alphabets fluently decreases with age.

Background

• Global adult literacy has increased from 56% in the 1950s to 86% in 2015.
• However, while this growth reflects the impact of children’s schooling, it disguises the existence of some 745 million adult illiterates worldwide (mostly women) who have never been to school, and others who may have dropped out of school before learning to read fluently.
• Developing functional, usable, literacy for adults is the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4 (target 4.6).
• The goal is to ensure that all youth, and a substantial proportion of adults, achieve literacy and numeracy by 2030.
• Many illiterate people are older, but a generation of illiterate school leavers is in the making.
• Schools in poor countries often use languages and teaching methods that require parental support and/or offer few books for reading practice.
• Some academics and donor staff found the concept of dyslexia for normal adults implausible or unbelievable.
• They tended to attribute the issue of illiteracy to social disadvantage, and the difficulties of educated adults to poor command of language or low personal motivation.

Observations by an ‘illiterate’ reading specialist

• Since 1992, the author has interviewed and given informal reading tests to dozens of educated people who (as adults) learned various languages (such as Hindi, Arabic, Japanese, and Russian) with scripts different from those studied as children.
• The author did not encounter anyone who had learned a script beyond the age of 19 who claimed completely effortless reading.
• Interviews and tests were also given to two individuals who learned Hebrew reading as children and who read fluently despite a lack of language knowledge.
• Interviews and personal experiences suggest that acquisition speed decreases in mid-adolescence.
• Capacity for fluent and effortless reading seems to wane significantly by 19 years.
• Most people interviewed over time read slowly (approximately 10–20 words per min).
• These individuals cannot read involuntarily as automatic readers do.
• They must activate conscious pronunciation of the letters in their heads.
• Slow and effortful decoding fills working memory with letters and limits comprehension.
• The prevalence of illiterate reading specialists is noteworthy.
• Unless these specialists were native readers, nearly all remained illiterate in terms of the written (rather than spoken) word.
• Perennially slow and inaccurate reading (neo-literate) people may read too slowly for regular speech; hence, a delay results and the prediction of the word may be completely inaccurate.
• Illiterate adults seem to forget sound–letter correspondences within a few weeks when reading due to difficulty remembering letter shapes and sound correspondences in the long term.
• Letter neighbourhoods and locations matter along with independent letter identification, and only a few letters can be read ‘in real time’ before making a mistake due to systematic neglect of certain letters.
• Regarding feature integration difficulties and ambiguities, incorrect priming from meaning results in features that should correctly identify a word being neglected. This error may not be noticed until a sentence is incomprehensible and requires a second attempt.
• Some letters may be recognised faster than others, while letters with many features similar to others that require comparison are detected more slowly than letters that share few features.
• Reliance on unusual letter shapes means that unusual characteristics at a certain location can facilitate distinction.
• In general, people read longer words more slowly resulting in exaggerated word length effect.
• Increased practice in one script may speed up others.
• There may be an occasional and inconsistent activation of the print-to-meaning pathway.
• Perennially slower identification of letters representative of non-native sounds may occur.
• Difficulties in calligraphic reading is present.
• Awkward handwriting occurs.

The basic neuroscience of reading

• Many neuro-imaging studies have explored the brain regions involved with reading in both dyslexic and non-dyslexic children and adults.
• Findings show that specialised brain regions work together to form a reading network.
• As children learn how to read, the brain rewires itself so that one area working on visual matters and another working on auditory matters work together as a cohesive unit.
• From the eye receptors, a signal traverses the superior colliculi and pulvinar nuclei to the occipital lobe (the striate cortex [V1] area), then travels through paths that recognise shapes toward the parietal lobe, which connects letters to sounds to find meaning in the medial temporal lobe.
• As visual information exits the occipital lobe, it follows two main pathways (or streams).
• The ventral stream (also known as the ‘what pathway’) is involved with object and visual identification and recognition.
• The dorsal stream (‘where pathway’ or ‘how’) helps process the object’s spatial location relative to the viewer and with speech repetition.
• The dorsal pathway stretches from the primary visual cortex (V1) in the occipital lobe forward into the parietal lobe. It is interconnected with the parallel ventral stream, which runs downward from the V1 into the temporal lobe.
• The ventral pathway identifies complex multipart objects. Words are encoded through a posterior-to-anterior hierarchy of neurons tuned to increasingly larger and more complex word fragments, such as visual features, single letters, bigrams, quadrigrams, and possibly whole words.
• Data from children support the proposed distinction between the phonologically mediated dorsal pathway and the direct print-to-meaning ventral pathway.
• As children become better readers, reliance shifts from the dorsal to the ventral pathway.
• Visual working memory is critical for many tasks in the parietal lobe.
• This type of memory permits the maintenance of object identities and their locations across brief delays, such as those accompanying eye movements.
• The parietal lobe may have a general role in remembering various types of visual information, mainly motor spatial attention and spatial memory.
• Beside the cortical structures involved in reading other areas also play a role.
• The pulvinar of the thalamus sends signals about sudden, unpredicted, motion in the environment to the cortex.
• Neuroimaging studies show early involvement of the thalamus in reading tasks before signals enter the cortex.

The role of implicit memory in reading

• Long-term memory is divided into two systems: a) explicit or declarative conscious recollections of events and facts, and b) implicit memory; instructions on how to do things.
• Explicit memory includes personal recollections (episodic memory) and conscious knowledge of facts (semantic memory).
• Implicit memory includes memory of procedures (procedural memory), priming, conditioned responses, and habituation to the environment; social learning and adaptive imitation also form parts of procedural memory.
• Implicit memory reconfigures functional networks of the brain early on, creating focal points at the cerebellum, the basal ganglia, and related subcortical structures.
• One important feature of implicit memory is task specification, which suggests that training for one script does not transfer to another.
• Letters and words taught to adults seem not to transfer completely into implicit memory; rather, they remain in semantic memory, which is vulnerable to forgetting.

Statistical learning of visual stimuli

• Statistical learning is a fundamental brain mechanism that extracts and represents regularities within our environment.
• It results in faster and more accurate responses to high conditional probability events compared to those of low conditional probability ones.
• Neurons in the later parts in the parvocellular ventral visual stream are tuned to increasingly complex combinations of visual features; they are related to the extraction of regularities from the visual environment (often without awareness) and they can identify which image features tend to appear together.
• For dyslexic people, the impairment limits their ability to identify which visual features tend to go together. Thus, neurons in the ventral visual stream usually shaped by such learning will not effectively support visual word and object recognition.
• There is a positive link between reading ability and statistical learning in the general population.
• Neo-literate adults experience difficulties related to statistical learning and possibly prediction of speed.

Perceptual learning: letters as objects, then words as faces

• Perceptual learning is a sustainable, long-term performance improvement of a perceptual task following training or visual experience.
• Perceptual learning effects are best understood as a change in the ability of higher-level integration or association areas to assimilate sensory information in the service of certain decisions.
• Perceptual learning seems to have an evolutionary value for animals and mainly occurs without effort in the implicit memory system.
• People typically think of reading in terms of language; however, reading is a perceptual process.
• In nearly all writing systems, visual stimuli must be coupled with associated sounds.
• Perceptual learning competently links visual symbols and sounds, particularly when they demonstrate one-to-one correspondence.
• Fluent reading requires unambiguous deciphering of a text in milliseconds.
• A temporal window in early life exists, which is a critical period during which the visual system is highly plastic; it is subject to a major rewiring that leads to the acquisition of important visual abilities.
• However, it is possible for an adult to acquire a new skill after the critical period.

Feature integration in perceptual learning

• Spatial attention seems to bind visual object features that co-occur at the same location and integrate them into a coherent object representation.
• When multiple objects are simultaneously present in a scene, the visual system must correctly integrate the features associated with each object and separate them.
• The processes underlying feature integration create a gestalt phenomenon: circles that are almost closed are seen as completed, and interrupted lines are seen as whole; bottom-up processing evolves into holistic processing as different parts are joined into a whole.
• Aging brings about changes in the ability to concentrate on one item while ignoring others.
• Age also seems to restrict visual working memory; thus, fewer features are identified at one time and whole shapes may not be easily detected.
• Line terminations and horizontals appear to be the two most important features for letter identification.
• The multiple accounts of inefficient reading acquisition beyond adolescence suggest the existence of a sensitive period affecting the early parts of the visual system, feature integration, or face recognition.
• Sensitive periods affect certain perceptual and motor skills early in life.
• Higher-order functions pertaining to abstract thought (such as analysing or learning grammatical rules) are not particularly sensitive to increasing age.
• The hypothesised sensitive period(s) affects implicit memory; thus, the reduced plasticity of a low-level function may affect complex behaviours upon which it depends.
• A sensitive period for reading automaticity is reminiscent of language learning in childhood.
• Many people who learn of neo-literate adult dyslexia (NAD) believe it should be expected given the difficulties experienced by adults when learning languages.
• Effortless, implicit, language learning during youth declines, but explicit memory and complex cognition can take over.
• Processing speed peaks in a person’s late teens and starts to decline at approximately 25 years.
• Visual reproduction peaks before the age of 20, while visual search and short-term memory for faces and family pictures and visual recognition all peak at approximately 20 years.
• Research shows the involvement of the visual word form area (VWFA) of the fusiform gyrus in recognising words (reading), musical notation, and numbers.
• The face recognition function provides flexibility in recognising words; we identify cursive and decorative letters, just as we identify people in profile and sideways (with or without long hair).
• In all cultures, people use the same brain structures to read.
• Depending on the orthographic depth and type of script, the activation patterns may differ, although the same principles apply.
• Approximately the first 170 ms of the process are visual; linguistic information and comprehension are added about 0.5 s later.
• From the VWFA, electrochemical signals of the visual stimuli move to areas connected to phonology and to meaning; fluent readers receive almost instant feedback about sounds and meaning through recurrent loops.
• The neural signature of dyslexia is a disruption of the posterior reading system.
• Some research suggests that developmental dyslexia involves deficits arising from the workings of the magnocellular layers of the lateral geniculate nuclei in the dorsal visual pathway.
• People with dyslexia have disruptions in the connectivity of neuronal bundles of neurons that link the visual cortex to the VWFA.
• Dyslexic readers are impaired in their recognition of faces and other complex objects and show hypoactivation in ventral visual stream regions that support word and object recognition.
• People with dyslexia tend to present early signs (such as white-matter deficits) in children that are clearly not shared by non-dyslexic readers.
• Illiterate people who perform worse than those who are literate on visuo-spatial tasks and who exhibit less consistent visual scanning paths demonstrate difficulties in discriminating between mirror images. They maintain a holistic mode of visual processing rather than adopting analytic strategies.

Performance of unschooled illiterate people during or after reading instruction

• When illiterate adults are taught, their brain reorganises to accommodate the new skill; however, the activation patterns only partly resemble those of individuals who learned literacy during childhood.
• Illiterate adults can learn to decode, but can only read laboriously and deliberately.
• Most studies show that the ventral pathway is not engaged (or is engaged insufficiently); the VWFA is not consistently or sufficiently activated.
• Some studies show that reading speed is related to the intensity of arousal observed in the VWFA.
• Moreover, brain imaging demonstrates that neo-literate people engage brain areas associated with effortful serial reading of letters, much like dyslexic people.
• In comparison to childhood literates, neo-literate adults demonstrated anatomical connections linking the left and right angular and dorsal occipital gyri through the area of the splenium of the corpus callosum; it was found that white matter in these brain regions was more dense in late-literate than illiterate people.
• Some studies revealed decreased grey matter intensities in functionally illiterate people compared to normal readers in several reading-related brain regions, such as the superior temporal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, and angular gyrus.
• The findings suggest that poor literacy skills are associated with several structural abnormalities in reading-related brain areas.
• This also suggests that adults who read fluently, but slowly, may improve reading skills with training; then, structural brain differences disappear.

Where are neo-literate adult dyslexia deficits located? Some hypotheses

• When children start reading they rely on the dorsal pathway.
• As they attain fluency, processing shifts to the ventral pathway that offers a direct print-to-meaning connection.
• The dorsal pathway locates the symbols in space and sequence. This seems related to phonological activation (letter-by-letter reading).
• The dorsal stream relies on the right parietal lobe, which is critical in visual working memory.
• It is possible that a restriction of visual short-term memory results in fewer features being identified at one time after a certain age.
• The origin could be at an early stage in the visual system; for example, the lateral geniculate nucleus and the V1 area of the occipital lobe. This area is activated by spatial cognition tasks and episodic memories and is heavily implicated in both spatial and object-based forms of contextual/predictive processing and associative learning in scene perception.
• A critical area may lie between the thalamus and along the dorsal path, including the input neurons from the thalamus to the parietal cortex.
• It is also possible that it could be in the spatial attention network of the parietal cortex.
• The parietal cortex is involved in spatial attention and binds features into larger shapes when the features are shown simultaneously at different locations.
• Another suspect area may be the ventral occipitotemporal cortex that integrates visual input with higher-order experiences.
• Furthermore, temporoparietal connectivity may develop deficits.

Conclusions and implications

The research highlights some issues that are relevant to policy and instruction, as follows:

• Difficulties with literacy are perceptual rather than linguistic.
• The suspected problem seems to lie somewhere along the dorsal stream.
• A sensitive period may involve declining circuits but also oscillations of brain waves that are out of sync with the neuronal groups where a signal is to be transmitted.
• Interviews with educated neo-literate adults suggest that the problem becomes significant by the age of 18 years approximately and deteriorates thereafter.
• Clearly, some people perform better than others, as suggested by perceptual learning research.
• Larger visuospatial memory may help, and some people may have better genetic connectivity among various regions.
• A slightly larger VWFA and/or an enhanced ability to recognise faces may compensate for upstream deficits.
• Exceptional executive functions and perseverance may also help maintain effort.
• The qualitative information available on educated readers and quantitative data on unschooled neo-literate people who have sought to learn to read suggest that we all become dyslexic toward new scripts by the age of 19 years approximately.

Instructional and policy implications

• Research suggests that because of being unschooled earlier in life, illiterate adults have shorter working memory, phonological awareness deficits, and language processing limitations.
• They are often poor and from rural populations.
• Given current knowledge, hundreds of practice hours are needed to automatise a script, and learners may possess neither the time nor the materials.
• Complicated literacy instruction requires extensive training of poorly paid instructors who may be expected to plan lessons, complete administrative tasks, and test students, while often being poorly educated themselves.
• To avoid these problems later in life, children should acquire fluency by mid-adolescence.

Potential remedies for performance improvement

• Hundreds of practice hours are needed to streamline the output of brain circuits that carry the various signals.
• Transparent orthographies are clearly the simplest to teach and practice.
• Reading instruction should build and optimise each of the tasks that seem to affect the dorsal stream.
• This suggests first adopting approaches that optimise visual perceptual processes and matching them with sounds until they are automatised, taking only a few milliseconds to process.
• Intensive courses involving extensive perceptual learning practice (longer than 30 min at a time) with short breaks are recommended.
• Learners should spend most class time in individual practice and do homework if possible.
• Teaching and practicing letters, one by one is recommended.
• Every learner should have a textbook with (for example) 10,000 words of text in spaced and large letters from which to practice.
• It should be ensured that characters are large and spaced, gradually decreasing in size over time.
• Repeated reading practice is required to increase speed.
• Practicing within 3.5 hours following formal class instruction may facilitate consolidation.
• Using mnemonics and memorisation techniques to facilitate long-term consolidation (at least in explicit memory) is recommended.
• Multisensory methods, such as touching letters in relief, help adults connect shapes and sounds more than just visually.
• Focusing on stimuli for extended periods is recommended.
• Learners should practice extensive writing, including copying and dictation.
• Facilitating feature integration by guiding students to letter locations is important for discrimination.
• Using computer media can help as many techniques and methods are best delivered through computers, cell phones, and tablets.
• The dorsal system should be prepared for reading through exercises to detect coherent dots motion.
• Learners should practice perceiving moving small objects in low-contrast lighting conditions.
• Fast action videogames may evoke emotions and thus consolidate shapes into implicit memory.
• Stimulating the vagus nerve may speed up consolidation of individual letters.
• Auditory practice of the same skill is recommended to continue learning.
• In the past, essential fatty acids have been shown to offer some effectiveness in improving children’s reading skills.