Low-numerate adults, motivational factors in learning, and their employment, education and training status in Germany, the US, and South Korea

A systematic literature review: how do we support students to become numerate?

“…Furthermore, these are the general situations which demand numeracy [6]: i) At home, numerous activities at home require numeracy. For instance, cooking involves the measurement of quantities and time, comparing prices and estimating money value when shopping, or keeping and predicting scores when playing or watching team sports; ii) At work, all jobs require numeracy [6], even the low-skilled [22]. In addition, numeracy practices are specific to each work context; and iii) In community and civic life.…”

“…In his study, Hoogland [3] described the process of the classroom, first serving real problem as the starting point, continued by stipulating mathematizing: formulating the mathematical problem, modelling, and problem-solving, then calculating occurs: employing mathematical analysis, and working mathematically, last is interpreting the result of the mathematical activity and make sense of it in the perspective of the original problem: interpret, evaluate, communicate, validate, and expose. In addition, several areas where differences can be made in enhancing numeracy learning through mathematics class are i) adjusting the design of learning environments; ii) changing the tasks; iii) self-regulation training and cooperative learning with peers; iv) process-oriented feedback; v) teachers' emotions and enthusiasm in teaching mathematics, and vi) contextual factors, e.g., parental support and the composition of peer groups [22].…”

Numeracy, adult education, and vulnerable adults: a critical view of a neglected field

“…Critical aspects focus on both numeracy and literacy as societal capabilities (Zeuner 2013) that individuals and groups can use to examine and challenge their positions in a society and the overall distribution of goods and power (Freire 1996). Several numeracy researchers focused their approach on this critical aspect (Dìez-Palomar 2019;Geiger et al 2015), others include motivational aspects (Liu 2020). Some papers in this issue, however, discuss numeracy skills and practices also from a functional perspective, e.g., for incarcerated adults with a restricted numerate environment (Reder 2020), indigenous learners who benefit from educational vocational programs (Jorgensen 2020;Miller et al 2019), or refugees in schooling preparation classes or other educational settings (Lüssenhop and Kaiser 2020;Nortvedt and Wiese 2020).…”