Kristina Mariager-Anderson

The results of the first PIAAC survey were published in October 2013. In the case of Denmark, the survey showed that Denmark is below OECD average when it comes to reading skills, above average in regard to numeracy and on average in regard to IT skills. In this paper, we analyse how the PIAAC results were covered by the media and how different stakeholders within the field of adult literacy took PIAAC as an opportunity to try to influence how the problem of adult literacy in Denmark should be represented to be. The analysis is based on Bacchi’s ‘what’s the problem represented to be?’ approach to policy analysis and Kingdon and Zahariadis’ multiple streams theory. The analysis shows that PIAAC did not provoke the same kind of national ’shock’ as PISA and that adult literacy is low on the political agenda compared to basic schooling