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Publication Literacy Assessment in the Third World: An Overview and Proposed Schema for Survey Use(1990-02-01) Wagner, Daniel AMany countries have sought to increase literacy among their populations. Rationales for such efforts usually involve the consequences for economic development, as well as for human development, health, and lower fertility. Programs for increasing literacy have often involved the expansion of educational programs, in particular primary schooling, and the creation of literacy programs and campaigns. However, a central paradox in efforts to reduce illiteracy in today's world is that much effort has been invested and little knowledge gained about how best to achieve success. According to one recent analysis by a Unesco expert, the well-known Experimental World Literacy Program (EWLP) ended with very little information being used by subsequent literacy programs. Yet although adult illiteracy rates of most developing countries are thought to be relatively stable (roughly 35-55 percent in Africa and Asia), population growth has meant that the number of illiterates has actually grown significantly, from 760 million in 1970 to 857 million in 1985.1 Demographi and economic changes in the Third World have made literacy a key issue in the development programs of many countries. In spite of an increased sense of urgency, there is a lack of understanding of the breadth and depth of the "literacy program" in almost every society, particularly in societies where illiteracy appears greatest and evaluation resources are least available. Uncertainty about the nature and extent of literacy provides an important rationale for taking a new look at literacy assessment in Third World societies.2Publication Who's a Literate? Assessment Issues in a Global Perspective(1990-03-01) Wagner, Daniel ADemographic and economic changes around the world and the linkage between literacy and development have made literacy a critical issue especially in the developing countries. But the uncertainty about the nature and extent of literacy has necessitated taking a new look at literacy assessment. Policy-makers have been hampered not only by too little data, but also by a failure to capture varying types and levels of literacy in each society. Dichotomies like "literate—illiterate" are inappropriate for conceptualising the problem and limit the potential for more effective decision-making. The paper analyses the problems of determining reliable and valid criteria for literacy. The way in which the problem of "who's a literate?" is resolved has serious policy implications.Publication Assessing Basic Learning Competencies among Youth and Young Adults in Developing Countries: Analytic Survey Framework and Implementation Guidelines(1999-09-01) Wagner, Daniel AThe World Conference on Education for All (WCEFA) in 190 at Jomtien, Thailand, included a number of educational targets related to out-of-school youth and adults, including: (1) to reduce the number of adilt illiterates to half of the 1990 level by the year 2000; and (2) to improve learning achievement to an agreed percentage of an appropriate age cohort. WCEFA also stresed the need to monitor and evaluate the performance of individual learners as well as the delivery mechanisms and outcomes of literacy and other non-formal education programmes. At the Mid-Decade Review meeting on EFA in Amman (in June 1996), the international community further called for efforts at both international and national levels to adopt new techniques and strategies to collect and analyze meaningful data to monitor progress towards the Jomtien goals. In the year 2000, UNESCO and other agencies will gather together worldwide data on education in order to take stock of the worldwide progress toward the WCEFA goals, a decade after Jomtien.Publication Indigenous Cognition? Review of J.W. Berry, S.H. Irvine, E.B. Hunt (Eds.), Indigenous Cognition: Functioning in Cultural Context(1990) Wagner, Daniel A; Gal, Iddo"What is known about the cognitive functions of other peoples that could enable extant psychology to become more comprehensive, to attain a 'universal' cognitive psychology?" This question was the focus of a 1986 NATO workshop held at Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada) whose working theme was "indigenous cognition and models of information processing." The primary goal of the present volume, which contains 13 papers, is to bring together evidence from "studies of cognition in those populations that have remained well outside industrialised society: the hunting people, the nomads, and the peasants of the contemporary world" (p. 2). The volume begins wtih a general section that includes papers dealing primarily with theoretical concerns in cross-cultural cognitive psychology and continues with four studies among African populations and with three among Native American populations.Publication On Being an Adolescent in Zawiya. Review of Susan S. Davis and Douglas A. Davis, Adolescence in a Moroccan Towan: Making Social Sense(1991) Wagner, Daniel A; Puchner, Laurel DianaAlthough adolescence is a well-accepted stage of life in Western society, the issue of whether it exists as a separate life stage in all cultures remains an open and important question. As part of the cross-cultural Harvard Adolescence Project directed by Beatrice and John Whiting, this book is an assessment of traditional concepts of adolescence in Morocco. Based on 11 months of intensive fieldwork, as well as multiple years of work in the same village, the authors used ethnographic observation, interviews, and psychological testing to collect a wide array of data on about 50 families including 150 children in the rural Moroccan town of Zawiya. Recurring themes in the lives of these adolescents, including maturity, self-awareness, gender, hierarchy, and ambivalence, are interwoven into a discussion of the basic social organization of Moroccan life.Publication A Contribution to Cross-Cultural Child Development Research. Review of Gustav Jahoda and I.M. Lewis (Eds.), Acquiring Culture: Cross Cultural Studies in Child Development(1991) Wagner, Daniel A; Puchner, Laurel DianaThe field now termed cultural psychology has begun to take on more importance in theories of child development and psychology as we have come to better understand the Eurocentric bias of Western science. However, cross-cultural studies that combine both psychological and anthropological methods are still rare. This book attempts to show the value of such a combined approach to research in child development.Publication To Read or Not to Read: The Enduring Question of Low Adult Literacy in America(1995-10-25) Wagner, Daniel AIn 1990, America's governors reached a historic consensus on a set of national educational goals as targets for the year 2000. Among these national goals was that " ... every adult American shall be literate." While this goal was widely applauded by those in the literacy community, much more national attention (and nearly 15 times the budgetary resources) has been devoted to the other goals that focus almost exclusively on improving the formal K-12 school system. Now, with the new Adult Education Act, welfare-reform legislation pending in Congress, and renewed debate over the Goals 2000: Educate America Act, the troubling (and enduring) question of low-literate Americans is back in the news.