From illiteracy to literacy in adult- hood: A microlongitudinal study

Little is known about literacy acquisition in adults. Yet, our former studies suggest that the majority of the changes induced by literacy in children also occur in adulthood. Based on this observation as well as on what we know from developmental studies on reading acquisition, we designed an intensive literacy course in which each difficulty (either phono- logical or visual) of the alphabetic code is introduced in turn in lessons dedicated to overcoming it. We applied this course for 3 1∕2 months to 9 adult Portuguese illiterates. They were tested five times: two before starting the course (pre-tests), two during the course, and just after they completed the course. We tracked their evolution in reading and writing, metaphonology, memory for spoken nonwords, speech in noise perception, and visual abilities, including mirror-image discrimination. Most participants learned to read and write and showed associated enhancements in several domains, in particular in phonological skills.

Summary and Conclusion

This monograph outlines the process and results of development of a common educational programme at masters level in health and social care management, which was supported by the Erasmus Life Long Education project CareMan (Cul- ture and Care Management). The CareMan project brought together university partners actively involved in educating social and health care professionals in leadership and management at master’s level in Europe. The five partners of the consortium were Lahti University of Applied Sciences – Lahti UAS (administra- tive and academic coordinator, Finland), Charles University – CU (the Czech Republic), Edinburgh Napier University – ENU (Scotland), Hammeline University of Applied Sciences – HAMK (Finland), and University of Évora – UoE (Portugal). The objectives of the project were to achieve lower -level educational goals that included the development through education cultural and value -driven leadership, quality of care and quality management to effectively manage an integrated health and social care service. Through mapping the situation in the field and comparing curricula of all participating universities the overall aim was to develop a joint masters programme in social and healthcare management. After the detailed understanding of national and institutional specifics of each of the individual academic entities it was recognised that, due to a number of regulation issues, the original aim was not achievable. Following subsequent analytical work, it was decided to develop a set of three master’s level modules. At the end of the project it was intended that all created modules would be available virtually to the participating programmes and would contribute some added value to existing curricula. In the future these ready -to -use modules are intended to be taught in cooperation with the participating universities or as a separate module in each university. The chosen theoretical framework of the project that underpinned the devel- opment, management and evaluation of the inter -cultural educational provision relied on the combination of two learning theories – ‘cooperative collaborative and social learning’ and ’transformational’ (Mezirow, 2009). This theoretical framework helped to align with European collaborative policy and its application on all levels of implementation of the project.