Short Communication
The Social Practices Approach to Adult Literacies:
How to Stop Failing Adult Learners
Author(s): Pamela Abbott*
Rwanda has set itself the ambitious target of enabling every adult to be able to read and write a simple passage and do basic arithmetic, but little progress is being made towards achieving it. EICV 5, carried out in 2016/17, found that nearly a third of adults say that they cannot perform these crucial tasks, and the proportion increases to just over 50% if we add those that say they can only do them with difficulty. Little progress is being made in reducing the proportion of adults that struggle with literacies. In the last 15 years there has been only a five percentage-point drop, from 37% in EICV 2 to 32% in EICV 5. Our research in the Western Province shows that only 9% of adults have attended a literacy course, even though 33%i do not have the essential literacies capabilities [1]. Only 14% of those that have attended a course have gained the skills that they hoped they would ga.. Read More»