Children’s Literacy is Important, but What About Adult Reading Literacy?

Abstract

We report on a study on adult reading literacy (RL), closely related to information literacy (IL) and very influential in IL development. The level of adult RL, especially its background, is much less investigated than RL of children and young. Existing studies indicate that the level of adult RL in Slovenia is not as high as we would like, which could in the long-term lead to social and economic consequences as well as hinder the principles of democracy and active citizenship. We investigated the factors connected with the adult RL: (1) experiences with past and current promotion of reading (R), attitudes regarding R, family literacy and RL; (2) practices and experiences in lifelong learning and related competences which are influential in the development and maintaining of RL and IL; (3) RL factors investigated in the OECD PIAAC study: content, cognitive strategies, contexts. Our online survey used various types of questions: single/multiple choice, Likert-scale, ranking, open-ended. The sample was purposive (snowball-type) (N = 260) and included adults of all ages, genders, educational and social levels and roles, and various types of housing and residential locations. We gathered information on how the adults perceive and utilize R in its various forms and contexts, what are their attitudes towards the promotion and promotors of R and RL (such as schools, libraries), what practices of lifelong learning and reading culture are present in the society, which contents, contexts of RL are most/least present and how developed are their various cognitive strategies related to RL. Our findings are informative for researchers and teachers in the field of literacies as well as planners of national educational and cultural policies.