Factors Influencing Acquisition of Adult Basic Literacy Skills for Cognitive Sustainability in Nigeria
Abstract
The study sought to determine the factors which influence the acquisition of Adult basic Literacy skills for cognitive sustainability in Lagos state, Nigeria. Four research questions were raised and answered, and four hypotheses were tested to guide the study. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The instruments adopted for the study were; Key Informant Interview (KII) and a Questionnaire. A 20-item questionnaire titled “Adult Learners’ Basic Literacy Skills Questionnaire”, (ALBLSQ) was developed by the researchers. A total of one hundred and eighty (180) questionnaires were administered purposively to adult learners across the six NMEC/NOGALSS literacy centers in Lagos state, and one hundred and forty-five (145) were retrieved. The reliability of the instrument was confirmed using a test-retest procedure, which gave a correlation coefficient of 0.87. The data was presented using frequency distribution tables, percentages and Bar Charts.
The data was analyzed using Spearman Rank Order Correlation Coefficient and T-test statistical tools to test the hypotheses at 0.05 significance level. The study revealed the following; that there is no significant relationship between adult learners’ perception and basic literacy skills for cognitive development; that a significant difference exists between the performance of adult learners before intervention and the performance of adult learners after the intervention of the adult basic literacy programme amongst others. The study concluded and recommended the following; that the curriculum of the adult basic literacy should be designed to have a combination of English and mother tongue language as a medium of instruction in order to aid cognitive development among adult learners; that a proper needs assessment should be carried out by the agency for Mass Education in order to design the adult basic curriculum to meet satisfactorily the cognitive intellectual needs of adult learners in order to enhance their cognitive sustainability in the 21st-century literate society, inter alia.
