Sustainable Development Goals and Adult Literacy

• In Event: 485 - Section on Sociology of Development Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 04. Transnationalism, Transnational Organizations, and Their Local-Level Consequences

Abstract

The United Nations has adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the year 2030, including education as one of 17 comprehensive goals. The SDGs could revitalize a sociological research agenda aimed at understanding the consequences of education internationally. This paper reviews the problem of causality in international education policy. It then focuses on one particular target within the Education goal: Adult Literacy. The paper suggests three quantitative data sources for assessing the impact of adult literacy for sustainable development, and further discusses mobile literacy as a fourth possible agenda for sociologists. The PIAAC (OECD), World Values Survey, and the STEP data from the World Bank are now available for researchers who wish to link educational change with attitudinal and behavioral change. What the SDG focus adds to the past is the urgent demand to understand how education does and does not contribute to social transformation. The corollary policy question is how to effect the type of educational change needed to bring about this change.

Author

• David Post, Pennsylvania State University