Keeping the practice open: Adult literacies in Scotland¹ Jim Crowther
University of Edinburgh Jim is based at the Institute for Education, Community and Society, Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh. He is a Senior Lecturer, Co-Director of the Educational Doctorate, Editor of Studies in the Education of Adults, and the Co-ordinator of the International Popular Education Network (PEN).
One impact of international regimes for measuring adult literacy has been to shape and mould practice to a narrow human resource agenda, particularly amongst member states of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2001; Tett, 2013). Functional skills for work have, in this context, dominated policy and practice and there have been a number of critical accounts of this trend (e.g. Hamilton and Barton, 2000). In Scotland a similar process is underway, but the pace of change is slower; there is resistance and there are distinctive contextual features which keep the possibilities for practice open to a wider range of interests and influences. This article aims to explain how this has come about and why. I will argue that two developments in particular are important: the location of adult literacies in community based educational provision and the conceptualisation of adult literacy as social practice. For the time being, at least, the agency of the adult literacy practitioner is still central to the development of creative and critical practice in the forging of a literacies curriculum for individual and collective autonomy in increasingly difficult circumstances. The wider interest in this experience, for those outside Scotland, is in the fact that policy and practice continue to enable a commitment to promoting social justice.
Traditions in adult literacy: the Scottish context
Hamilton (1996) argues that adult literacy, like adult education generally, has been shaped by competing traditions of purpose and practice and this helps to explain why so many different motivations, interests and alliances can be mobilised under the banner of improving adult literacy for different and conflicting ends. She identifies traditions of adult literacy as remedial activity (still powerful even if the vocabulary is used less frequently); the tradition of welfare activity with its missionary purpose to bring enlightenment to the disadvantaged; the tradition of economic activity with its emphasis on morally and economically productive citizens helping themselves (clearly the dominant emphasis in adult literacy policy more generally in the UK and beyond); and the emancipatory tradition with its emphasis on a reciprocal relationship between literacy, action and social justice. This latter tradition has often had stronger ideological and rhetorical appeal in the UK than its presence in practice might suggest is warranted. Nevertheless, the balance between these traditions has shifted over time and their interconnections can be as important as their differences.
In Scotland local authority Community Education Services (CES) (formed in 1975 and now renamed Community Learning and Development) have been, along with the voluntary sector, the main providers of adult literacy classes. Further education (FE) colleges also offer classes but to a lesser extent than in the community sector. This arrangement was almost changed in the re-organisation of FE colleges in 1992, when the pendulum of meagre resourcing for adult literacy swung in the direction of formal education. After intensive lobbying by the CES, the decision to maintain the community links of adult literacy work was successful, with approximately 80% of funds retained for this sector. However, a simple distinction between these areas of educational provision can be misleading, particularly as the mantra for partnership working accelerated in the 1990s (see Campbell, 2011).
Historically, the formation of the Scottish version of community education in 1975 brought together youth work, community development and adult education as “committed allies” in a single service. Adult literacy
1. This article is based on an input to the 2013 NIACE, RaPAL and UCU Conference Adult English and Maths in Families, Communities and Workplace. The title of the presentation was simply 'Community'.
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