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Break the cycle – quality education

UNESCO’s International Literacy Day is raising awareness globally on the issues surrounding childhood and adult literacy.

10th January 2020

International Literacy Day 2020 – let's work together to help to break the cycle.

8 September 2020

For over 50 years, International Literacy Day has been celebrated around the world to highlight the importance of literacy as a basic human right.  However, despite progress made, there are still at least 750 million adults worldwide who do not have basic literacy skills.

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The global literacy problems stem from many barriers including race, gender, class, poverty, digital access and geography. Now COVID-19 has made access to education even harder and we risk losing the progress that has been made. 45% of academics who responded to our Inclusivity survey believe a lack of education or poor education is a major barrier to a more inclusive society and UNESCO predicts that less than 70% of adults globally will have basic literacy skills by 2030, which will contribute to a cycle of poverty that is hard to break and social mobility issues.

Join us as we start to look at ways in which we can play a part in helping to break the cycle.

We believe in quality education for everyone, everywhere and by highlighting the issue and speaking to experts in the field, we can start to find ways we can all be part of the solution.

If you are working on related research that can help tackle global literacy issues, or would like to contribute to our featured content, please get in touch.

Contact us

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News, blogs and video content

View our latest content in the area of education and learning.

Tackling the nation’s literacy challenge can create a fairer society

How is it that with free education for everyone, an overwhelming body of evidence that says learning to read is good for you, and the richest and most diverse publishing industry in the world, over 7 million adults in England have very poor literacy skills?

Read the blog

Emerald publishing proudly partners with Research4Life

Emerald has joined the Research4Life partnership which gives the publisher the opportunity to aid the non-profit initiative in its mission to make research available across many of the world’s developing countries.

Find out more

We spoke to literacy experts Evan Ortlieb, Amanda Godley and Amanda Thein about how research can help to break the cycle. Listen to their thoughts here.

Freely available articles, book chapters and special issues

Public libraries' role in supporting e-learning and spreading lifelong education: a case study

El-Shaimaa Talaat Abumandour

Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning

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Community cultural wealth and literacy capital in Latin American communities

Lina Trigos-Carrillo

English Teaching: Practice & Critique

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Connecting theory and practice: reviewing six learning theories to inform online instruction

Earl Brieger, Vishal Arghode, Gary McLean

European Journal of Training and Development

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Adult literacy organisers in Ireland resisting neoliberalism

Tom O’Brien

Education + Training

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Through the wall of literacy: Transformative practice in social networks among GCSE re-sit Further Education students

Howard Eric Scott

Education + Training

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Conceptualizing digital literacies and digital ethics for sustainability education

Susan A. Brown

International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education

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Literacy Research, Practice and Evaluation

Book series
 

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Featured education calls for papers

Take a look at our calls for papers around the field of education.

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Publishing with English Teaching: Practice & Critique

Promotes research and theory related to English literacy that is grounded in a range of contexts: classrooms, schools and wider educational constituencies.

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Publish with Emerald Open Research

Find out about publishing your research around these topics with Emerald Open Research.

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The Power of Diverse Voices

To see more about how we are delving into some of the key issues around global inclusivity and diversity you can visit our power of diverse voices microsite and read our 2020 Global Inclusivity Report.

Here we look into a number of barriers which prevent an inclusive society. Poverty, the barriers faced by people in a world of those who have and those who have not, class, gender, sexual orientation and racial discrimination we’re some of the themes highlighted. We also take a look at uncovering some of the barriers to inclusivity within academia and how research can play a part in the journey towards a more equal and inclusive world.

Get in touch

If you are working on related research that can help tackle global literacy issues, or would like to contribute to our featured content, please get in touch.

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Alignment & partnerships

In support of our report, we’re working hard to align our content to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and asking the question ‘How do we achieve an inclusive society by 2030’.

We’re also working in partnership with Research 4 Life, providing free access to research content for those in developing countries, giving more underrepresented people access to information that can help to drive change in some of the world’s poorest countries.

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UN Sustainable Development Goals

We specialise in social science research that furthers the UN SDGs, and aims to have real impact.

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Research4Life

We’re working in partnership with Research 4 Life, providing free access to research content for those in developing countries.

Read about Research4Life
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The Society of Scholarly Publishing

We also work with the SSP towards collaborative and representative publishing content across diverse communities.

Visit the SSP website