Critical inquiries about ideology in adult literacy policy and practice


Paula Elias, University of Toronto

I review the uptake of ‘ideology’ in research about adult basic literacy education. I reflect on ideology as a critical sociological concept, drawing upon feminist and Marxist scholars like Dorothy Smith (2011) and Himani Bannerji (2020) who have examined ideology as a mode of consciousness and praxis that is historically specific and constitutive of capitalist social relations that shape our experiences of gendered and racialized oppressions, among other forms of social struggle. This is a departure from researchers studying adult literacy, where ideology is regarded as a model for understanding the sociocultural ideas and values that determine frontline adult literacy work and learning (see Street, 1984; Luke, 1988). In the context of Canadian adult education, ideological critique has been used to explain the shift of local and national literacy directives and their promotion of human capital theories, presenting a transition from learning for self-empowerment to learning for employment (Atkinson, 2019; Darville, 2014; Pinsent-Johnson, 2015). However, this framing erases the ways literacy has served as part of the infrastructure for capitalist development, a reality not possible without the co-constitutive relationship between adult education and the state. I challenge this narrow representation of ideology through the case study of immigrant and racialized young adults enrolled in basic literacy programs with desires for higher education. I argue that an ideology about educational access comes to life through the work of young adults seeking opportunities to get credentialized alongside the work of allies (literacy workers) to enhance the human capital of adult learners. Collectively, their activities are organized, but not hegemonically determined, by the neoliberal capitalist state. Understanding ideology as the production of complex, historical, and material relations rather than the imposition of a hegemonic set of ideas and texts offers important considerations for building a transformative – rather than reproductive – praxis for social change.

This paper will be presented at the following session: