04 Apr Grahame Neville – an ongoing advocate for adult education and literacy
Grahame Neville receiving his award as the CCA 2022 Community Education Student of the year.
From starting in an individual tutoring course at Tamworth Community College Grahame Neville went on to feature in Season Two of the SBS Series “Lost for Words”. Grahame has now been awarded Community Colleges Australia (CCA) 2022 Student of the Year.
Following “Lost for Words”, Grahame returned to Tamworth Community College to do a computer course. He has been an ongoing advocate for adult education and literacy, with an interview with MC Chemene Sinson at the CCA 2022 conference. More recently he took part in video sessions for the Reading Writing Hotline’s new Adult Literacy Tutoring package of resources.
In one of the new videos, Grahame reflects perceptively on the changes that he sees in himself and his literacy activities since finishing adult literacy classes. He notes that now he will always “have a go” at reading signs or a newspaper, where before he didn’t have the confidence to try. This in turn means he sees that he’s continuing to build and develop his literacy in the real world, even though he’s not formally studying.
Grahame’s insights dovetail perfectly with research findings from Prof Stephen Reder about adult literacy and Practice Engagement Theory:
Individuals’ literacy proficiencies develop as a by-product of their engagement in everyday reading and writing practices and, reciprocally, literacy proficiencies affect levels of engagement in reading and writing practices. Reading engagement is the strongest predictor of literacy growth.