The fit between training and use in a vernacular literacy training program: An ethnographic study of four Papua New Guineans

This dissertation is an ethnographically-based examination of the relationship between vernacular (mother-tongue) literacy training given at a National Literacy Course (NLC) in Papua New Guinea in 1987, and the usefulness of that training, when four Papua New Guinean course participants return to their local community. To determine the effectiveness of the training, the following three issues are considered: (1) What was the level of literacy awareness in the community prior to the four participants\u27 attendance in the course? (2) The National Literacy Course curriculum, (3) How did the course participants apply the NLC training when they returned home? These issues are discussed against the background of Brian Street\u27s (1984) theoretical models, the autonomous and ideological, for analyzing the uses and consequences of literacy. Results indicate a lack of application of the vernacular literacy training received by the four participants in the 1987 NLC to their local community literacy needs when they returned home. Analysis shows that the training received was not appropriate for, or applicable to, the level of vernacular literacy need in the community