Not only has the advancement in information and communication technology increased convenience or efficiency in human life but also has changed general aspects of human life. Not only has the advancement in information and communication
technology increased convenience or efficiency in human life but also has changed general aspects of human life. Literacy in the previous society that focused on reading and writing printed letters, cannot describe all the essence of literacy in the new order of communication of the present time. For this reason, letter literacy meaning to read and write printed texts are insufficient to communicate and participate in the age of digital information and adapt to social changes of today. Therefore, modern citizens living in the digital era are required to improve reading and writing skills on computer screen and smart-phone screen, in addition to letter literacy. This is a crucial educational task of the present time and demands a new change in literacy education.
Hereupon, we need to understand adult literacy education as a foundation of all educations and see what participation motivations and self-concept female learners have in adult literacy education and how their daily living abilities have been changed by the learning process and literacy education, compared to the experiences they have gone through, so far.
This study investigated the effects of two independent variables; participation motivation and self-concept on dependent variables; daily living abilities. Participation motivation consists of detailed variables of goal orientation, activity orientation and learning orientation. Self-concept consists of detailed variables of self-esteem and self-efficacy. For this study, 250 female learners aged over 50 and less than 80 who are receiving adult literacy education in Daejeon area, were chosen as research subjects and 5 literacy education institutions were chosen as research institutions. Total 250 questionnaires were collected and 200 questionnaires were used for the final analysis except for 50 ones with unfaithful or omitted responses. For data analysis, the SPSS 20.0 program was employed. Path analysis was carried out to verify the casual model between the variables and 200 samples were used for this. In order to identify demographic characteristics of the research subjects, descriptive statistics and frequency analysis were conducted. Also, the path coefficient which is a standardized coefficient(β) to compare the influence sizes of variables, was processed using the multiple regression analysis method. In addition, factor analysis was performed to verify the validity of measuring items of the questionnaire and correlation analysis was performed to acquire multicollinearity between the variables. Then, Cronbach''s a coefficient was calculated to examine internal consistency of the measuring items.
The study result showed that goal orientation, activity orientation and learning orientation of participation motivation and self-efficacy of self-concept of female leaners in adult literacy education did not any significant effect on daily living abilities, whereas self-esteem of self-concept had a significant effect on them. This finding demonstrates that adult literacy education institution managers and volunteers have to take various actions to enhance self-esteem of female learners. Moreover, non-literacy learners with high self-esteem would be able to communicate with the new world and regain independence through literacy education.