Literacy and Numeracy Studies 2015. © 2015 KEIKO YASUKAWA. This is an Open Access article 
distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) License 
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the 
material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any 
purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. 
 

Citation: Literacy and Numeracy Studies (LNS) 2015, 23(1), 4419,  
http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/lns.v23i1.4419 
  
L I T E R A C Y  &  N U M E R A C Y  S T U D I E S  V O L  2 3  N O  1  2 0 1 5  1 
 

EDITORIAL 
 

 

KEIKO YASUKAWA   

  

I begin this editorial by expressing sincere thanks on behalf of the 

editorial team to a retiring member of the editorial team, Jean Searle. Jean 

has been a member of the editorial team of Literacy and Numeracy Studies 

since 2005, and prior to that, she was a member of the Journal’s editorial 

board. She has provided helpful and insightful editorial advice to many of 

our authors, and has been a strong proponent of our Journal. We have 

benefited greatly from her editorial expertise as well as her strong 

involvement as educator and researcher in the field. We wish her the very 

best in her retirement. 

This issue features contributions which, on the surface, are very 

disparate. Greg Marston and Jeffrey Johnson-Abdelmalik write about a 

community based adult literacy program in Brisbane, Australia. Sonja 

Beeli-Zimmermann writes about adult educators learning to become 

numeracy teachers in a German-speaking town in Switzerland. And in the 

third article, Tao Bak and Pauline O’Maley write about vocational 

education and training practitioners assuming responsibilities for the 

language, literacy and numeracy development of their learners in 

Melbourne, Australia. A strong common thread in all three articles is the 

identity work being undertaken ‒ by the adult learners, in the case of the 

first article, and by teachers in the second and third articles. 

The article by Marston and Johnson-Abdelmalik presents accounts of 

learners in a community-based adult literacy class where the program is 

built first and foremost around each learner’s acknowledged needs and 

goals. Although notions of ‘literacy as empowerment’ and social capital as 

outcomes of participation in learning are not new, the stories in  this article 

illustrate how real and tangible these were in transforming the lives of 

learners in the program. It is an important piece of research that help us to 

make the case for more spaces for community based provision of adult 

literacy and numeracy learning that are not constrained by the too common 

pre-packaged learning outcomes and performance criteria that can be at 

odds with the learners’ aspirations and needs. 

Beeli-Zimmermann’s article explores how teachers’ beliefs shape 

their identities as emerging numeracy teachers. Her research adds to 

existing literature about mathematics teachers’ beliefs which are largely 

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/


 E d i t o r i a l   

  

 

 

  

2 L I T E R A C Y  &  N U M E R A C Y  S T U D I E S   

 

researched in the school education contexts. For emerging adult numeracy 

teachers, the beliefs influencing their identities and practices as numeracy 

teachers are more complex, and include beliefs shaped by their school 

experiences of mathematics learning as well as their experiences of working 

as adult educators.  

The role of vocational education and training practitioners in 

addressing their learners’ language, literacy and numeracy needs has 

become a very topical issue in Australia, New Zealand and the United 

Kingdom. While the idea of literacy and numeracy being critical dimensions 

of pedagogy may be easy to accept in principle, the idea of taking 

responsibility for students’ literacy and numeracy development may not be 

so simple in practice for teachers who identify as experts in the electrical 

trades, or child care, or hospitality. Bak and O’Maley examine the journey 

of these teachers’ learning to expand their understanding of what it means to 

be a vocational teacher. 

Together the three articles contribute to deepening our understanding 

of how learners and teachers build new identities – in some instances 

motivated from the start by their own personal needs, in others by external 

demands and policy changes.