Thomas G. Sticht

Understanding Readers and Their Uses of Texts

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the understanding of readers and their uses of texts from the writers. The ability of a text producer to read and evaluate her or his own material and to judge its appropriateness for users will be conditioned by the understanding that the producer has of the types of tasks that readers will perform with the document. For a great many people who are asked to produce texts in their work, their major experiences with functional literacy (that is, reading for applied, in contrast to recreational, purposes) are obtained first in their elementary and secondary schooling and only later in their experiences in the world of work. The chapter discusses the school-to-work transition and the reversal of the primary reading tasks from that of reading-to-learn in high school to reading-to-do a job task in the world of work. The students experiences with textbooks and learning in school may lead to the development of school-like, topic-oriented manuals when, in fact, workers want job-related, performance-oriented guidance.

Knowledge, Literacy, and Power

Studies based on two random-digit-dial samples (N = 538 and N = 632) of adults in San Diego suggest that higher levels of declarative knowledge about “mainstream” culture and politics in the United States are associated with achieving and exercising power regardless of cultural background. Statistical relationships were examined among general mainstream societal knowledge, domain-specific political knowledge, the amount of reading reported, indicators of power (including occupational status, income, voting, communicating about politics), and requisites of power (including perceptions of powerlessness, political efficacy, and political interest). Extraneous cognitive-processing variance was controlled by using simple checklists of declarative knowledge. Although causality cannot be proven, the results suggest that a persons content knowledge is related to reading and power, even when age, education, gender, ethnicity, and measures of literacy practice are controlled. Thus, knowledge is associated with power regardless of most barriers that citizens otherwise face.

Assessing Adult Literacy by Telephone

Several industrialized nations have conducted expensive door-to-door surveys of adult literacy. Following a critique of the role of knowledge in literacy, the research presented here examined the construct and action validity of the use of simple checklists to assess the declarative knowledge component of adults literacy by telephone. Significant relationships were found among knowledge when assessed either by listening (telephone) or by reading (mailed questionnaire) modality. The telephone data showed similar relationships to demographic variables that have been found in the 1993 National Adult Literacy Survey and other literacy surveys during the last half-century. It was concluded that the telephone method may provide a valid, cost-effective alternative to door-to-door assessments of literacy.

Development and Evaluation of Job Reading Task Tests1

This paper describes research to develop the Job Reading Task Tests (JRTT) for three military jobs having civilian counterparts: cook, automative repairman and supply clerk. Relationships of general reading ability to performance on JRTT are described for men in three groups: an unselected sample, a group selected for special aptitude in a JRTT area, and a group both selected and trained in the JRTT area. Results indicate that, while general reading arid JRTT performance are positively correlated, the JRTT are sensitive to selection and training, and hence are measures of special reading abilities as well as of general reading abilities.

Cast-off youth : policy and training methods from the military experience

List of Tables List of Figures Preface Cast-off Youth Part I: Employing the Unemployable Mental Standards in the Military The Low-Aptitude Soldier in World War II and the Korean Conflict Vietnam and Project 100,000 The All-Volunteer Force and the ASVAB Miscalibration Cast-off Youth in Perspective Part II: The Functional-Context Training Approach Military Strategies for Using Low-Aptitude Personnel Functional-Context Technical Training Functional-Context Literacy Training Part III: Developing an Experimental Functional-Context Training Curriculum Survey of Electronics Training Programs and the Electronics Industry A Functional-Context Training Electronics Technicians Course Cast-off Youth: Summary and Recommendations Appendix: Mental Quality and Military Service: An Interview with Robert S. McNamara References Author Index Subject Index About the Authors

Cognitive Research Applied to Literacy Training

The military services provide job skills training for millions of adults annually. This task is complicated by the wide range of cognitive capabilities that characterize the enlisted populations of the military services of most nations. For instance, it has been found in the United States that some people who enter the Army may require four times the amount of learning time as others to learn some job skill or knowledge (Fox, Taylor, & Caylor, 1969).