Action Research? Practitioner-based Research? Research into Practice?

By Marina Niks

What do these terms mean? How do they relate to you and your practice?

Have you ever wanted to know more about a particular problem you encountered in your daily practice? Are you proud of an achievement or a technique you developed?

Did you know literacy practitioners are currently discussing these topics? Are you aware that there are literacy practitioners engaged in doing literacy research? Did you know there is help available to help you do research too?

Interested? Read on!

Through the Adult Literacy Cost-shared Program some resources have been committed to continue to help build the literacy research network and to strengthen the research capacity in the literacy field in BC. Here are some of the planned initiatives for the current year:

Research Friend Available
The relationship with UBC is continuing and Marina Niks will be our research friend again this year.

Individual help
Marina is anxious to help you develop research questions and strategies to answer those questions. You can contact Marina with any research related question (no question is too small!) by phone at (604) 738-8942, via email at miniks@unixg.ubc.ca, or on FirstClass - send a private message to Marina Niks or post a message in the Research conference.

Group discussion
Marina will continue to encourage conversations about research topics on the Research sub-conference on First Class. You are welcome to participate with your views, questions, comments, or topic suggestions. Rovers (read only visitors J) are always welcome!

Training Workshops
Following the success of two previous experiences, more workshops are in the works for the current year. Previous workshops have covered a wide variety of research related topics such as how to write research questions, submitting research proposals, data collection techniques, data analysis, report writing, etc. Keep tuned to learn more about these opportunities!

Literature Summaries
A new feature for this year is being introduced. Bonnie Soroke will be working on producing resources that literacy practitioners might use to improve their own practice based on the current literacy research findings. The goal is to link research theory with literacy practice. Ideas or suggestions on topics are welcome - let Marina know.

IALS Report …
Literacy in the Information Age

The final report of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) "Literacy in the Information Age" was released on June 14, 2000. It is a joint publication of Statistics Canada and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The report compares the literacy skills of adults (ages 16 - 65) in 20 countries: Australia, Belgium (Flanders), Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. The study provides the world's first comparable estimates of the level and distribution of literacy skills in adult populations and offers new insights in the factors that influence the development of skills at home and at work.

Key findings:

• Overall, Canada ranks amongst the top countries on the prose literacy scale, but ranks in the middle on the quantitative and document literacy scales. Sweden and the other Nordic countries were consistently at the top while the United States and the U.K. rank lower than Canada. Chile is the lowest ranked.
• In Canada the discrepancy between people with low and high literacy skills is far larger than in many European countries, such as Germany and the Nordic countries.
• While the scores between countries differ considerably, no country does so well that it can be said to have no literacy problems. Even in Sweden 28% of adults are at the lowest levels (1 & 2) while in Canada 42% of adults are at levels 1 & 2 (prose scale).
• Canada has the second largest number of adults (23%) at the highest level of prose literacy (levels 4/5). Sweden is the only country with a higher number at this level (32%).
• In all countries, young secondary school graduates (age 20 - 25) have higher literacy skills than non-graduates, but in some countries the gains to literacy from education are greater than in others. In Canada, the gains are substantial .

Note: Literacy is defined as the ability to understand and employ printed information in daily activities, at home, at work and in the community - to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential. To measure proficiency levels in the processing of information, the IALS examined three literacy domains: prose, document and quantitative.

The report Literacy in the Information Age is now available from the OECD On-line Bookshop at http://electrade.gfi.fr/cgi-bin/OECDBookShop.storefront/.