trainingadultliteracyeducatorsindevelopingcountrie.docVIP

Training Adult Literacy Educators in Developing Countries By Alan Rogers ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THIS PAPER I have used a number of acronyms (some of them newly coined for the purposes of this paper); for the sake of clarity; they are set out here and at the top of each page. ABET – adult basic education and training ABETT – adult basic education and training teacher ALF - adult literacy facilitator ALE – adult literacy educator (of all kinds, both facilitator and ABET teacher) ALLP – adult literacy learning programme NFAE – non-formal adult education TABETT – training of adult basic education and training teacher TALF - training of adult literacy facilitators TOLE – training of literacy educators (of all kinds) TOT – training of trainers of adult literacy educators “The central assumption behind the concern about improved training for adult educators is that it will lead to better performance by the adult educators which will in turn lead to improvements in the quality of adult learning programmes. Is there empirical evidence to support this assumption?” (Youngman and Singh 2005: 15) I TERMINOLOGY USED IN THIS PAPER 1.1 Literacy learning or language learning? This paper relates to the training and support of those who teach literacy to adults in developing countries. Literacy here is taken in the rather narrow sense of the initial skills of encoding and decoding and meaning making and numeracy. We are not concerned here, for instance, with post-literacy (except incidentally) or with second language literacy or with language education per se. We are not looking at any other form of so-called ‘literacy’ such as legal literacy or even visual literacy. Our concern is with those who help adults to develop first literacy skills in a language which they and/or the providing agencies feel is appropriate. 1.2 Complex and changing world: The world of teaching literacy skills to adults in the context of developing societies is