2010 May 28th: Dr. Daniel A. Wagner on Global Literacy

First let me introduce a bit about the speaker. Dr. Daniel A. Wagner is a professor in the school of Education, Penn U. He is also Director of the International Literacy Institute, Director of the National Center on Adult Literacy, and Director of the Penn Global Development Initiative (GDI). From his school faculty website, it is known that Dr. Wagner has extensive experience in national and international educational issues, has consulted for numerous U.N. and donor agencies as well as with the U.S. government, and has worked in more than a dozen countries around the world. Dr. Wagner has more than 120 professional publications, including 20 books (translated into a half-dozen languages) across topics of literacy, basic education, child development, applied technology, and research and policy in cultural and international perspectives. For more information, please check: http://www.gse.upenn.edu/faculty/wagner .

Dr. Wagner comes to Taiwan this time as his second visit. While he was still a PhD student in the 1970s, he accompanied his advisor to Taiwan for a research on Taiwan's literacy scale and dyslexia. He was surprised to know that Taiwan's general literacy was higher than USA and this time he is even more surprised at Taiwanese people's general English competency. Yet the overall point of having this forum this time is to talk about the global research on education and literacy with two sessions: the morning session Literacy and economic development and the afternoon session Trends in child and adult literacy: A global perspective and new trends. So I will talk more about the talk itself first.

Since we are now talking about the global literacy, we have to give a definition. According to the Organisation of Economic and Culture Development (OECD) in Paris, France, literacy is defined as a particular capacity and mode of behaviour: 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. (For more information, please see this.)

Literacy is highly relevant to a country's GDP and economic growth. With various charts, tables and data, Dr. Wagner declares how literacy is Gini coefficient (the contrast b/w the richest and the poorest), a correlation to the gap of literacy and income.

Literacy is also related to education, public health, crime rate and so forth. So when to invest literacy for children, and how? -- The answer is the ASAP, as

However, in some cases, parents often overestimate their child's reading ability. This reduces our ability to intervene proactively.

In conclusion:

People used to think that literacy is nothing to worry about in countries from the northern American or western Europe. Yet in USA, even with universal primary and second schooling, no change over 1993-2003. There are still around 25% Americans with functional illiteracy. In other parts of the world, the lowest literacy stands among: poorest population, least educated, ethno-linguistic minorities, refugees, and nearly half the population of many developing countries.

With the state-of-the-art ICT, the cost of information is decreasing exponentially. ICT helps literacy with access, connectivity, content (language, subject, etc.), and learning competencies. In the case of India, there is a project held in Andhra Pradesh, called Language & Technology, Together, Help

The main target group includes:

-- girls and young women

-- ethnic and linguistic minorities

-- lowest income and unemployed

Approach:

--relevance of content

-- high quality instruction

-- multilingual basis for literacy

--extremely user-friendly

The researchers did not use the latest and the most expensive computers for the testers. Instead, they took the low-cost hardware infrastructure based on under-used ICT labs. Their multimedia materials in multiple languages are directed for literacy and information. Results? 30% of the learned returned to school, or kept being persistent users. However positive the learning the results are, the result is not overwhelming. Interestingly, the relationship between print-reading and online-reading is low. Maybe youths are learning different kinds of literacy through ICTs.

As for adults, another project works for adult literacy and reeducation: learning-connections.org.

It fosters motivation and incentives of less literate adults with online assessment, career counseling, self-assessment, and job referral.

In conclusion:

In both sessions, I found more and more people willing to / brave to ask questions. Most of them are very insightful and at the same time challenging to answer. A mother asked how to make her children read for fun while there is almost no time for anything but schoolwork. A social worker asked how to incite foreign mothers to join the reading sessions as they don't understand Chinese nor English and could not teach and communicate with their children fluently. A teacher asked how to make parents read, and what will be more efficient, urging parents to make their children read, or urging the parents to read themselves? Dr. Wagner and the invited hosts could not answer the questions fully (and the invited hosts sometimes divert the questions to what they wanted to express... which was odd and fun!) but I am pleased to know that we are now better at asking questions than 3 or 5 years ago, and these indeed are very difficult questions, let alone there is no one definite answer to cure everything. Throughout the day, the morning and afternoon Q&As are the highlight for me and many people to ponder and think more deeply about the talk and how to work on literacy in Taiwan ourselves.

One more thing I have to add: A successful event depends upon its consideration to the audience, time-control, and the speaker's presentation skill. This forum is fairly successful as it offers a packet of one free magazine, recommendation of lunch venue info, a discount book list for book-shopping on site, and a feedback form. In addition, the hostess, i.e. CEO of the Commonwealth Magazine Foundation is a very decent and capable host to manage each session slots and the Q&A. Surely Dr. Wagner is a well-prepared speaker with plentiful information to share with the audience. But I have to say there are several flaws in the ways to present and prove Dr. Wagner's arguments, perhaps this is due to the limited time. And this is a public talk with the public, not to the academics, yet the speech is way too much in the tone for fellow researchers rather than to the general public. Nevertheless, it is surprising to find that people in general accept the way (or appearing to be) Dr. Wagner presented his data and tables. Perhaps we Taiwanese are used to having scholars/teachers talking. (grinning) I know this event is held with many parties, and hope one day I can do likewise and hold more successful and meaningful events whether for SCBWI or for academic conferences.