Abstract
In South Korea, literacy education was institutionalized and the Academic Career Acknowledgement System was introduced in 2007 with the revision of the Lifelong Education Act. The System helps illiterate and undereducated adult learners receive primary and middle school diplomas through participation in literacy programs provided by regional literacy education institutes. There has been significant debate over how learners' literacy should be assessed.
In Seoul, the primary school diploma course program began in 2011. The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education after a number of discussions adopted the ‟portfolio‟ which includes the entire learning process as a method of assessing academic credentials and has issued evaluation guidelines. There are three types of evaluations (diagnostic, formative, and summative), and the format of the evaluation paper in the portfolio is also introduced in the guidelines.
In order to clarify how this evaluation guideline is used in the literacy programs in Seoul, field research including interviews was done at three different types of literacy institutions. Through our research, we have found that each program provides creative and unique education following the evaluation guidelines. We also found that the Academic Career Acknowledgement System has produced not only issues on evaluation but also many other
issues such as the differences of working conditions between teachers and the achievement gaps between learners while the System improves the learning of uneducated adult learners and gives them confidence.
The research results will give suggestions for discussing the evaluation guidelines in literacy and Japanese programs in Japan.
