There is ongoing debate as too how reliably the earlier IALS (International Adult Literacy Survey) and the more recent ALLS (Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey) have captured the "true" situation with respect to adult literacy and numeracy capabilities.
Thomas G. Sticht reflects on this question in a paper entitled:
The International Adult Literacy Survey: How well does it represent the literacy abilities of adults?
Another discussion on how earlier IALS results might be interpreted is:
International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS): an analysis of international comparisons of adult literacy
Here is the 1996 report by the MoE on how New Zeanders fared in the survey.
Adult Literacy in New Zealand: Results from the International Adult Literacy Survey
Detailed material on ALLS from Statistics Canada
Statistics Canada have made available a great deal of detailed information about the ALLs survey conducted there in 2003 (upon which the New Zealand survey was based)
Here is a guide to the survey questions respondents answered.
There is a good deal more information on this site.
The user manual for the Canadian ALLS survey
The master codebook for the survey.
More stuff here for serious satisticians !!!
There is also another article by Sticht (Research Note 10 July 2001) the title of which really appeals to me: "Has the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) defames the Competence of America's Labour Force".
ReplyDeleteOne thing about ALLs is what seems to be a totally consistent rejection of adults self assessment as to whether their numeracy skills are sufficient for the jobs they hold.
I'm interested that the MoE firmly believe that mathematics teachers or specialists are the best people to teach numeracy to adult tutors, and from time to time I question that approach. If numeracy is the bridge between everyday life and mathematics then I think there are two ways that numeracy teaching can be approached - from the mathematical and from the everyday - right now I think the "official" approach is very definitely from the mathematical.