ABSTRACT
The motive behind this study was to identify the factors affecting the performance of participants in adult literacy programme in Udu local government area of Delta State. The study showed that poor funding and non availability of qualified teachers were the most serious factors affecting the good performance of the participants in the literacy programme. The study also showed that engagement in their various occupations equally had adverse effect on the participants performances.
From the findings, some suggestions were also made,
1. More qualified staffs should be recruited.
2. More funds should always be made available on time to enhance the participants performance
3. Teaching aids should be provided in adult literacy centres.
4. Enlightenment campaign should be intensified to keep the people informed of adult literacy programme in their door step.
TABLE OF CONTENT
Chapter One
Introduction
Statement of problems
Research questions
Purpose of study
Scope of study
Significance of the study
Limitation of study
Definition of terms
Chapter Two
Review of related Literature
Chapter Three
Methodology and procedure
Population/sample
Research instrument
Validity of research instrument
Reliability of research instrument
Administration of instrument and collection of data
Data analysis
Method of data analysis
Chapter Four
Presentation and analysis of data
Chapter Five
Summary, Conclusion and Recommendations
Summary of the study
Summary of the findings
Conclusion
Recommendations
Suggestions for further research
References
Questionnaires
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Before examining the study at hand, it is portent to reflect our minds to the meaning of the concept of literacy and its origin in Nigeria. Literacy as a concept brings up many ideas with varying degree of charity in the many people. The term literacy is commonly taken to mean the art of reading, writing or those about to read and write. But to those in the taken for granted category, literacy is inherently problematic and potentially elusive, literacy can be seen as a basic communication skills that enables an individual to extent the range of his contact well beyond his immediate environment.
Mass literacy has long been argued to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for sustained development to take place and there is an extensive literature on the problems of increasing literacy rates. The world now has almost one billion adult as its illiterates and over 95% of these are to be found in the developing countries. Disproportionate number of illiterates are females, from poor households and members of minority groups within their own countries in absolute numbers. China and India have the most illiterate as a result of their large population, profiles of illiteracy rates by age group and sex have proved slow to change over time though over all level of literacy have improved considerably.
Historically the modern foundation of adult education in Nigeria had its root laid by the British in Levi after World War II that brought the need to extend education to large number of Nigerians. This leads to the setting up of colonial secretary advisory committee in 1944 with the intention of considering the best approach to the problems of mass literacy and adult education. Their suggestions gave intelligent guidelines for the development of adult education and literacy education in the British dependencies. They stressed the need for a more generalized system of education with the interest of the British government showed in the direction of providing some sort of adult literacy education to the masses various experiments were embarked upon with the view to establishing and promoting adult literacy education to the various communities.
A practical manifestation of this interest was that the colonial administration started to encourage the local people and arouse their interest in establishing evening classes. Furthermore efforts to provide functional literacy stemmed from the report of the UNESCO world conference of education ministers at Teheran in 1965 in which Nigeria participated. The recent world conference on education for all called for reduction in the adult literacy levels to one half of the existing values. UNESCO, definitions of functional literacy is that “a person is functionally literate who can engage in all those activities in which literacy is required for effective functioning of his group and community and also for enabling him to continue to use reading, writing and calculation form his own and the community development”.
There remains problem in translating this simple definition into practice. Two principals methods have been advocated self assessment (e.g. though consensus questioning) and the use of standardize literacy test. Indirect self assessment methods carry a high risk of error and over reporting, particularly when carried out using untrained interview. In many surveys the ability to read aloud from newspaper is used as a criterion though this may not indicate comprehension other use the ability of the respondents to write their names as the criteria. Some assessments include basic numerous as an integral part, but practice on this is inconsistent. At the most unreliable level respondents are asked “can you read and write?” with no capability to tes6t the veracity of the response or differentiate levels of facility. Literacy may be defined in a mother tongue or I a national language and this is like to affect the number of illiterate identified. Direct method that involves standardized testing is expensive to administer and also suffer from problems of reliability and validity. Wagner (1990) proposes new approaches to assessment which employs both direct and indirect measures of literacy, attempts to differentiate level of facility and recognizes the context in which literacy is acquired and used.
UNESCO had developed a series of concepts which illustrates some of the shifting approaches that have been employed in literate. Some of the employed in literacy project. Those include fundament education, community development, and universal literacy. Work oriented literacy and cultural literacy. However, according to Jones (1990) none of these have stayed in place long enough to have acquires an adequate theoretical grounding. In reality, many of the assertions made in the literature about relationships between literacy and development are hypothesis for which there may be circumstantial evidence but no rigorous justification while it is generally accepted that literacy is a necessary condition for access to ideas from the wider world and that “modernization in attitudes and disposition is closely associated with the possession of literacy more specific relationships have proved difficult to unravel. This is partly because literacy is a social construction and is significantly in determining and being determined by the prevailing social order, Oxenham (1980). It is being increasingly recognized that literacy is a relative construct and is in the practice context dependent. Global definitions therefore appear both elusive and unattainable (Winchester 1990). The implication is that literacy programmes need clear objectives that are grounded in different socio-economic context and the criteria for improvement are unlikely to be universal, or if they are they will be at the lowest level of cross cultural generalization.