Over the past decades, community movements in Europe and North American have pioneered literacy activities. Their current role varies from one country to another. Public authority bodies have increasingly assumed responsibility for basic education programmes for adults; as a result, community movements are now taking up different, complementary and sometimes exclusive missions.

Download: Stratégies d'alphabétisation dans le mouvement associatif (Literacy Strategies in the Community Movement) (...

The purpose of the workshop organized by the UIE in April 1991 was to consult a group of specialists and to stress the research priorities needed in order to enhance the humanistic and intercultural dimensions of Adult Education, as well as to define the recent trends in the research on discrimination based on race, sex, religion, and political belief. Such research on discrimination based on race, sex, religion and political belief. Such research is seen as a contribution to peace, human rights and the diminution of all forms of discrimination. Further aims were to point out what...

The International Symposium on Language Standardization was organized by the Research Center for Multilingualism and Language Contact (HAZEMS) and the Graduate Program for the Study of Language Contact and Multilingualism, University of Hamburg, in association with the Unesco Institute for Education (USE).

The purpose of the Symposium was to exchange experiences in the standardization of national languages in different socio-cultural contexts. Examples of the strategies and results of such experiences in Africa, Latin America and Europe were presented for discussion in research...

In December 1986 a workshop on the prevention of functional illiteracy and the integration of youth into the work force was held at the UNESCO institute for Education by European specialists in this field. The chief objective of the worshop was to develop international cooperation in the area of research on both professional practices and players involved.

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Curriculum reform programmes carried out by many countries around the world during the last thirty years or so have been intended to adjust the content of the general education curriculum to suit the changing social, economic and cultural context and to meet the demands brought about by global development. These include decolonization, advances in science and technology, the energy crisis, environmental problems, population issues, poverty and unemployment, international understanding, peace and disarmament, the value crisis, the impact of mass media and the knowledge explosion. In...

In the past twenty years questions of adult literacy have come to the forefront in many industrialised countries. Firstly, in many of these countries it has been found that a significant proportion of children are leaving school without adequate levels of reading and writing. Secondly, rapid social and technological change means that literacy demands are changing. During this period, researchers have also expressed renewed interest in literacy. There have been major developments in literacy research in many disciplines, to the extent that the shape of the field has changed dramatically....

UNESCO has decided to make education a fundamental human right. Nonetheless, there are still more than 900 million illiterate people worldwide, and a far greater number than this has yet to achieve an adequate level of basic education. To draw attention to this serious matter, 1990 was designated International Literacy Year. A major programme was established with the goal of achieving education for all by the year 2000. Many countries have launched large-scale programmes to eradicate illiteracy or laid out plans to do so. These programmes must include post-literacy and continuing education...

The present bibliography has been prepared by the Unesco Institute for Education (UIE) for the Sixth European Conference of Directors of Educational Research Institutions (Bled, Yugoslavia, 9-12 October, 1990), and focuses on research in adult literacy and basic education. This bibliography is a general documentary introduction to literacy in industrialized countries. It is not a precise instrument for specialized research.

Download: A Selective bibliography on literacy in industrialised countries...

Since the British initiatives of the early seventies in recognizing the problem and its magnitude, functional literacy among the adult population has now become a major policy concern for many industrial countries. Literacy, as clearly underlined in the conclusions of the World Conference on Education for All is a world issue concerning each and every country, in the North as well as in the South.

Download: Functional literacy in Eastern and Western Europe: report (PDF 4,29 MB)

In this monograph a picture will be given of the development of Adult Basic Education in the Netherlands. ABE is a relatively new provision in Dutch adult education. It is grounded in the experiences gained from four projects that developed aspects of education in the seventies and the early eighties for adults with little schooling. The ABE provision which is, so to speak, the crystallisation of these project experiences is intended as an instrument to improve the social participation of adults with little schooling. One could say that this is the yardstick by which to measure its...