Low Participation in Adult Literacy Programmes in Kalingalinga Lusaka District Zambia

International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation (IJRSI) | Volume VIII, Issue I, January 2021 | ISSN 2321–2705

Low Participation in Adult Literacy Programmes in Kalingalinga Lusaka District Zambia

Flora Ngoma- Moono
University of Zambia

ABSTRACT:- The purpose of the study was to investigate low participation in adult literacy programmes among adults in Kalingalinga Lusaka district in Zambia. The main objectives of the study were to find out whether adults are aware of the literacy programmes, to find out the reasons why adults participated in literacy programmes and to find out why there is low participation in the literacy programmes.
The participants were adult residents of Kalingalinga. The study used a survey research design. In order to collect data from the respondents a questionnaire was used.
The finding of the research showed some of the reasons that were given for low participation in literacy programmes included the following; some people were simply not aware of the literacy programmes and others stated that it was time consuming.
One of the recommendations of the study was that there was need for continuous promotions of programmes to encourage a lot of adults to participate.
Key words: Participation, Adult, Literacy, Programmes.

I. INTRODUCATION

Adults not being able to read and write has been a global problem for a long time. In September of 2015, the UNESCO institute of statistics (UIS) reported that 85% of the world’s adults aged 15 and older lacked basic reading and writing skills. That’s 757 million adults and two- thirds of them are women (Peterson, 2017).

LITERACY

According to UNESCO (1995) literacy refers to the ability of an individual to read and write with understanding a simple short statement related to his/her everyday life. The concept has since evolved to embrace multiple skill domains, each conceived on a scale of mastery levels and serving different purposes. May today view literacy as the ability to identify, interpret, create, communicate and compute using printed and written materials in various contexts.
National Assessment of Adult Literacy defined literacy as task-based and skill-based, the task based definition focusing on the everyday literacy tasks an adult can and cannot perform without, where the skill –based definition entailed the knowledge and skills adults must possess in order to perform their tasks, ranging from basic, word level skills to higher level skills (White and Mc Closkey, 2003)

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