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With approximately one billion adult illiterates in the world today and adult literacy programs making up one to five per cent of government or donor budgets, teaching basic literacy skills is a challenge. This report summarises research into 'the cognitive mechanisms that enable learners' brains to perceive and interpret written patterns in a few milliseconds' and applies these findings to make literacy instruction more effective for adults in developing countries. The aim of this report is to provide information that will help in policy development and sensible resource allocation. The chapters are: Background: adventures in adult literacy; Cognitive science in the service of adult literacy; Instructional and social issues of literacy acquisitions; Policy implications of cognitive literacy methods. Included as appendices are: Improving reading performance in adult literacy classes of Burkina Faso; Literacy tests and questionnaire. Show less

Technological achievements require complex skills for the workplace, along with creativity, communication, and critical thinking. To compete effectively in the global economy, governments must provide their citizens with relevant education and training. To help close the skills gap, international agencies often advise governments of developing countries to de-emphasise basic knowledge and focus instead on complex cognition and systemic improvements. However, the donors' advice may be due to memory biases of highly educated people. Such training strategies would fail most students, because complex skills are built by combining and automatising shorter chains of thoughts or behaviours. An effective training process requires much practice, feedback and rearrangement of subcomponents over time. Execution of various tasks must become automatic and effortless to avoid using up too much of the very limited capacity of what is termed the 'working memory'. Marketable skills are those skills which are fluently performed without excessive cognitive load. To provide complex skills for all, including non-cognitive skills, curricula should therefore first ensure detailed instruction and practice of basic components which can then be strung together and applied to new tasks. Policy advisers seem unaware of these scientific insights, so they are not taken into account. The article reviews the essential neurocognitive functions involved in the acquisition and execution of skills chains. The author concludes that to improve the skills of economically disadvantaged populations, donors and governments must acquire expertise and offer advice on the basis of cognitive science.

Published abstract reprinted by permission of the copyright owner. Show less