This year, Massachusetts adult basic education practitioners are engaged in bringing reform to adult numeracy and math instruction on two fronts. Within Massachusetts, revision of the ABE Massachusetts Mathematics Curriculum Frameworks is underway based on recent research and prevailing thinking in the field. Nationally, strategic planning to raise awareness of adult numeracy instruction is ongoing through the Adult Numeracy Network (ANN). Both efforts cap a decade-long struggle by Massachusetts ABE math teachers to change how we teach math to adult learners in our programs. Both efforts aim to bring numeracy out of the shadows of adult education and raise it to the same level as adult literacy and language learning in the national consciousness, policy, planning, and funding.

Math reform and numeracy instruction in ABE is almost invisible in the national debate. In current literacy campaigns like the National Literacy Summit, numeracy, or adult mathematics literacy, merits barely a mention.(1) In contrast to the US, similar literacy campaigns in other English-speaking countries, such as the United Kingdom and Australia, speak of an adult literacy and numeracy educational system of learning.

The Development of the ABE Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks
Over the past decade, several initiatives set the stage for the Massachusetts ABE Curriculum Frameworks that are currently under revision.

The First Version
In 1989, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) published the Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics, a document that served as a template for reforming and improving K-12 mathematics education across the nation. In 1994, sixteen Massachusetts ABE/GED teachers formed the ABE Math Team and studied the K-12 standards to see how some of the ideas might play out in their adult education classrooms. After a year of action research in their classes, these teachers published two documents, a set of "adult education math standards" and stories of what changes looked like in their classrooms. Their adult math standards were incorporated into the Massachusetts ABE Math Standards (1995) and were the first set of ABE frameworks to hit the press. As such, they served as an early template for the ABE Frameworks in other subjects in Massachusetts that were subsequently developed. These early Frameworks also served as a model for other states.

In 1996, in the wake of education reform and a national science and math initiative in the state (which included ABE), the Massachusetts ABE Math Standards were subsumed under the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks: Achieving Mathematical Power (January 1996). It was the only adult education subject included in the state curriculum frameworks for K-12. In 2000, the adult ed math frameworks were revised outside of the K-12 framework. The current revision of the Massachusetts ABE Mathematics Curriculum Frameworks is a revision of that first framework, but heavily influenced by developments in the adult education field since then, both nationally and internationally.

National Influences
In 1990, three Massachusetts teachers joined several others in approaching the NCTM with a paper, A Call to Action, asking that the NCTM include adult learners in their reform agenda. NCTM responded by forming a task force on adult learners and subsequently hosted the first national Conference on Adult Mathematical Literacy (March 1994). This conference brought policymakers, researchers, and practitioners together to discuss the status of adult numeracy education and to determine future directions.(2) Out of this conference came at least two significant events: the formation of a national network of practitioners and the development of the "honest list: what math we should be teaching adults."

The Adult Numeracy Network
The Adult Numeracy Practitioners Network was formed by the adult education practitioners at this 1994 Conference on Adult Mathematical Learning. In 1997, the ANPN board voted to change the name of the Network to the Adult Numeracy Network (ANN) after it became officially affiliated with NCTM. The ANN has since held a national conference for adult education practitioners in conjunction with the national meeting of the NCTM ; this year, ANN held its annual meeting at COABE 2000 in Memphis, Tennessee. In addition to publishing a newsletter for its members three times a year, ANN sponsors an electronic discussion list that has an international reach.(3)

The Adult Numeracy Frameworks
In 1995, the ANN was granted one of eight planning grants for system reform and improvement funded by the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) as part of the Equipped for the Future (EFF) project. World Education, in cooperation with five state literacy resource centers, accepted the grant on behalf of the Adult Numeracy Practitioners Network (ANPN). Over the course of a year, through teacher-led focus groups, and an online virtual study group, the ANN expanded upon the "honest list" developed from the conference. See: A Framework for Adult Numeracy Standards: The Mathematical Skills and Abilities Adults Need to be Equipped for the Future (1996).(4) The teacher teams studied and discussed other documents and developed seven themes that serve as the foundation for adult numeracy standards: Relevance/Connections; Problem-Solving/Reasoning/Decision-Making; Communication; Number and Number Sense; Data; Geometry: Spatial Sense and Measurement; and Algebra: Patterns and Functions.

As a result of this work, mathematics was included in the Equipped for the Future Content Standards: What Adults Need to Know for the 21st Century (Stein, 2000). However, of the 16 EFF standards, only one specifically addresses numeracy or mathematics; listed under Decision-Making Skills, it is: "Use Math to Solve Problems and Communicate."

International Influences: Defining Numeracy
International influences have begun to find their way into US numeracy practice through frameworks from other countries, including Australia, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Since the 1980s, work by adult educators in Australia, the United Kingdom, and other countries has expanded the definition of numeracy. Current thinking suggests that numeracy includes more than the ability to perform basic calculations. In the Australian curriculum frameworks, numeracy denotes the ability to perform a wider range of math skills, such as measuring and designing, interpreting statistical information, giving and following directions, and using formulas. Moreover, numeracy and literacy are presented as interconnected and on an equal footing. The Australian frameworks are written to address the purposes for learning mathematics and do not proceed from a school-based mathematics curriculum model. Rather, the frameworks look at the mathematics that is used in the context of adult lives.

The numeracy framework in the United Kingdom is organized by mathematical topic rather than by function. The UK framework also shows examples of where adults use numeracy skills, and includes, at every level, number work, geometry, measurement, and data and statistics. Many countries now participate in an international research forum called Adults Learning Mathematics (ALM). The National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL) hosted their conference in July 2000. Several US practitioners participated.

An international survey of the numeracy abilities of adults will be part of the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills (ALL) Project in 2002. The framework created in the development of the survey defines and describes the complex nature of numeracy. The revised Massachusetts ABE Curriculum Frameworks for Mathematics and Numeracy incorporate some of these ideas in the current revision. (Source: Gal, I., van Groenestijn, M., Manly, M., Schmitt, M. J., and Tout, D. (1999). Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey: Numeracy Framework: Working Draft. Ottawa, Ontario: Statistics Canada.)

Influencing National Policy
In April 2001, ANN held a strategic planning meeting to consider recent developments in national literacy policy through the lens of numeracy practitioners. ANN members and invited guests considered four major policy documents and the role of numeracy in these documents. As a result of this meeting and as part of its plan for national visibility, ANN submitted three commitments toward working on goals of the National Literacy Summit Initiative for the coming two years:

1. ANN will draft and circulate a position paper urging policy makers to include numeracy as well as literacy and language as a focal area;
2. ANN will develop and deliver presentations for national and state adult education conferences that highlight the recommendations in the ANN Framework, a national standard for numeracy instruction; and
3. ANN will continue to connect US practitioners to the work of ALM and other relevant research through its newsletter and Web site and will encourage national research agendas on adult education and literacy to include numeracy issues.

Summary
The past decade has seen teachers in Massachusetts adult basic education organize to rethink and reform numeracy instruction. Certainly, our work would have been much less rewarding had we not looked to others outside of Massachusetts: to our energetic and talented colleagues in Adult Numeracy Network and the Adults Learning Mathematics Research Forum. Taken together, we are confident these grass roots efforts have laid a solid foundation to help guide policy, research, and large-scale curriculum frameworks and assessment for adult literacy and numeracy instruction in all 50 states.

Notes

1. See From the Margins to the Mainstream: An Action Agenda for Literacy (2000) Report of the The National Literacy Summit Initiative. "The National Literacy Summit Initiative is a field-driven effort to improve our nation's system of adult literacy, language, and lifelong learning services. Its Action Agenda was developed through grassroots consensus building and serves as a blueprint for community action." (www.nifl.gov/coalition/summit/index.html) While "compute and solve problems" is included in the definition of literacy, and "calculating" is included in the broad range of essential skills, nowhere do the words numeracy or mathematics appear in the goals of the initiative or in the document.
2. Proceedings of the Conference on Adult Mathematical Literacy, edited by Iddo Gal and Mary Jane Schmitt, and published by the National Center on Adult Literacy (Philadelphia, PA: 1994). For an electronic Summary of Discussions, go to www.std.com/anpn/virtual.html
3. numeracy@world.std.com The list is archived on both the NIFL LINCS discussion lists: www.nifl.gov/lincs/discussions/numeracy/numeracy.html and the Math Forum: forum.swarthmore.edu/epigone/numeracy
4. Available at www.std.com/anpn/framewkTOC.html

Esther Leonelli has been an ABE and GED math instructor at the Community Learning Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts since 1985 and a teacher-writer for theEMPower (Extending Mathematical Power to Adults) Curriculum Project at TERC, Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the last year. She also moderates the Numeracy List. (To subscribe to the list, send an e-mail message to: numeracy@world.std.com). She can be reached at 617-349-6363 or by e-mail at edl@world.std.com

Mary Jane Schmitt works at TERC as co-director of the EMPower Project, a mathematics curriculum development project for adult and out-of-school youth. She hopes all ABE/GED teachers who teach math check out the ANN and ALM Web sites and joing the numeracy list discussion. She can be reached by e-mail at mary_jane_schmitt@terc.edu