Literacy and Learning out of School: A Review of Theory and Research

During the last two decades, researchers from a range of disciplines have documented the considerable intellectual accomplishments of children, adolescents, and adults in out-of-school settings, accomplishments that often contrast with their poor school-based performances and suggest a different view of their potential as capable learners and doers in the world. ¹ Much of this research has dealt with the practice of mathematics—for example, young candy-sellers in Brazil who, despite being unschooled, develop flexible methods for arriving at the correct answers to math problems important to their vending (Saxe, 1988; see also Cole, 1996). Worlds away, southern California suburbanites have shown a comparable competence in real-world arithmetic problem solving—figuring out the best bargain in supermarkets or calculating precise portions as part of weight-watching activities (Lave, 1988). Like the children in South America, these adults provide the illusion of incompetence in their performance on formal tests of the same mathematical operations.