| A descriptive study of adult literacy was carried out in a small rural community in north Florida utilizing an ethnographic methodology. The objectives were (1) to describe literacy use by a small-scale farm family and (2) to explore the meaning of literacy in this rural context.;Rather than being passive targets of information dissemination, the farm families were information seekers and actively controlled the ways in which they went about getting farming information. Several factors affected the extent to which written materials were used in getting information including (1) the opportunities for information exchange via other media, (2) their accessibility both in terms of physical access and readability, (3) the credibility of information sources, and (4) the relevance of the content.;It was suggested that such context-specific descriptions of functional literacy could be used: (1) to design relevant literacy education programs, (2) to evaluate the literateness of a person in relation to the literacy skills of others in that context, (3) to design curricula utilizing written materials from that context, (4) to design information dissemination media to be congruent with literacy use and meaning in that context, and (5) as a comparative baseline for further explorations of functional literacy.;After a description of the community context, data on the case study family are presented as typical activities over the course of a year, and the purposes and extent of literacy use are described in relation to those activities. Literacy was found to be a useful tool but also a source of frustration. The frustration was related to the written materials themselves as well as to the reading and writing requirements imposed by agencies and other people. |
