This
was the first Literacies web forum
discussion.
We
started with these questions:
Do
you use statistics such as the
ones found in the IALS in your
work?
How
has/does the IALS and other literacy
statistics affect your work?>
Did
you find anything surprising in
the journal articles?
Has
your idea of how the IALS affects
the field changed in any way?>
Let
us know how you are connected
to literacy work and what,
if any, relationship the IALS has
to the way you do that work. Tracey
Mollins of Literacies Sandy
Middleton of Literacy BC Richard
Darville of Carleton University
What
happened on the IALS forum?
by
Richard Darville, Sandy Middleton and Tracey
Mollins
In
November of 2003, we invited readers to
participate in our on line discussion, an opportunity
to delve into issues raised by IALS. The forum
was an enthralling few weeks. Close to
sixty people participated, some only as readers
but many as active contributors. The range
of opinions and experiences was impressive. The
forum demonstrated how important and productive
it is for people in the field to have opportunities
to connect and to reflect together, in depth.
Here are some of the main threads of the discussion
that we noted:
IALS has been very important in justifying
government support and policy for literacy
work, particularly in relationship to literacy's
economic importance.IALS is useful in public
promotion and education (notably, for example,
in debunking the simple dichotomous view that "you're literate or illiterate").
At the same time, to use IALS seriously we
have to understand how it produces literacy
rates.
When we do try to understand the IALS-specified "levels of literacy," we confront thorny
questions. For example, how should we understand
the great differences between the IALS levels and
the ways people assess theirown literacy? IALS tells
us whether people have skills adequate to an abstraction
called "the knowledge society," but
-- since not everybody lives there -- how do
these skills relate to people's abilities to
deal with their actual lives?
Talking about IALS inevitably leads to a
discussion of policy issues. Most notably,
how do IALS-type measures, focused on individuals'
decontextualized skill levels, help to shape
accountability processes thatconstrict how
literacy workers can do literacy work as they
understand it? (This question was so prominent
that it seemed it should be a theme for another
web forum).
Through
this first forum, we learned several things about
hosting online discussions that we hope to bring to
future forums. In particular, we found that it's important
to find ways to enable participants to join in or
catch up with the iscussion, for example, by posting
regular summaries.We look
forward to future discussions, and hope that you continue
to participate.Thanks again
to everyone who participated in the web forum!
