Project Status : Completed
The Penceil project (How People Encounter E-Illiteracy) starts from the belief that people’s IT needs have, for too long, been defined from above: by government; by IT suppliers; by training providers; by exam boards; and so on. The basic questions of how people experience any lack of skills in their daily lives have not been asked: what barriers it presents to them? and what they want to do with the skills they learn?
These are not new concerns. When adult literacy attracted interest in the 1970s providers started by believing they knew what their students wanted. It took some time to realise that asking the students was a necessary part of the process. This experience of getting students to design their literacy curriculum is one of the foundations of Penceil: the experience of students, teachers and providers of computer and IT skills is another. A third strand is the work that has been done in defining media and information literacies, but most of this work starts from ‘what is literacy?’ rather than ‘what does it mean not to have these skills?’.
Government and commerce are moving their services to the internet and other computer systems, partly because they can provide a better service that way, but largely because they can save money by doing it. For instance, Gordon Brown’s aim of cutting over 100,000 public service jobs depends upon people using the internet to access services and inputting their own data, rather than civil servants doing it for them. Companies like Amazon and Expedia can save money, and reduce prices, because customers find their own products and services.
This raised the questions of whose game is being played. Is it the individual who is being given the power to communicate easily with friends and family around the world or are people being fitted into new ways of doing business for other’s benefit? Even more, what is happening to people left outside this electronic loop?
The Penceil project believed that we can start to answer these questions better if we start from studying illiteracy rather than literacy.
The Penceil project was undertaken by the Department of Information Systems at the London School of Economics and Political Science in conjunction with the NIACE. The project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council under their e-society programme and ran for two years from October 2004.
The project was based around a housing estate in Lambeth South London and had the support of the local community association, Lambeth College and Lambeth Adult Learning Service. It was an Action Research project, so it not only tried to understand the issues but also worked with local residents to design and implement programmes which will met their needs.
Who’s who in Penceil
Ela Klecun is the principal investigator. She is a lecturer in information systems at LSE and has undertaken research in the provision of e-health service in south London.
Mike Cushman is a research fellow in information systems at LSE and will be the main person undertaking the research. He worked in adult education before joining LSE, working in adult literacy and numeracy and community based programmes. He is a former Head of the Lambeth Adult Education Service and has undertaken research in organisational learning and knowledge management in the construction industry.
Alan Clarke is the Associate Director for ICT and Learning at NIACE. He has been involved with Computer-Based Learning for twenty years and has written extensively on the use of ICT and learning.
Ewa Luger is a project officer in ICT and Learning at NIACE. She has investigated the UK on-line project and how socially excluded people access technology.
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For more information about Penceil please contact:
Mike Cushman
Research Fellow
Department of Information Systems
London School of Economics and Political Science,
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
m.cushman@lse.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)20 7955 7426
Or visit the Penceil website at: http://is.lse.ac.uk/penceil/
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