In Adult Learners' Week last year there was a first-time national award, sponsored by Pearson, for the Adult Apprentice of the Year. There were 81 nominees from across the age range and from a multitude of jobs. Staff at NIACE were keen to find out more about their stories so they analysed their nominations, asked for more information and…

This essay offers a commentary on how the relationship between language and literacy practices in and out of school has been conceptualized. It draws upon two new books in the field. Shirley Brice Heath's new book, "Words at Work and Play: Three Decades in Family and Community Life," which makes use of rich ethnographic accounts of…

Today the system of supplementary professional education (SPE) is the main institutionalized subunit that is oriented toward "adult learners". Surveys have shown that in many cases investment in SPE is more profitable, predictable, reliable, and short term than that in any other form of education. Data on supplemental professional…

Presents (with tongue in cheek) a four-style behavior model guaranteed to produce excellence in the four types of trainees: nematodes (docile but learn nothing), gerbils (fond of noncompetitive games and hugging), warthogs (like to attend expensive seminars), and Cro-Magnon (like to interpret to others as opposed to actually learning anything…

A literacy program incorporating adult learning principles was designed using functional materials and an appropriate methodology, and the feasibility of this program was assessed in an adult basic education setting. Analysis of achievement data indicated that the application of adult learning principles to adult literacy resulted in effective…

The quality of a literacy program can be assessed by taking into account the following factors: purpose of the program, how the program meets the most important current needs of the adult population, if it is accessible to the people who need services, and whether the literacy content is relevant to learners' needs. Flexibility of funding also is…

This issue contains five articles about assessment in adult literacy programs. The first article, "Living Literacy: Rethinking Adult Learner Assessment" (Susan L. Lytle), focuses on developing alternative forms of assessment such as literacy portfolios to identify changes in four dimensions of adult literacy over the course of literacy…

These 23 presentations are organized in five categories: diversity, assessment, distance education, learning, and teaching. Five papers on diversity include the following: "From Rosie the Riveter to Comparable Worth: The Infusion of Gender and Women's Issues into an Interdisciplinary Curriculum for Working Adults" (Linda L. Hulbert, Theodore A.…

The case of Singapore illustrates how well-deployed information technology (IT) can be a change agent in education and national development. IT has been a catalyst and enabler of the shift from didactic, passive instruction to interactive, learner-centered and learner-directed instruction. In technical education in particular, IT has served as a…

The Virginia 1999-2000 Learning Disabilities Training and Dissemination (LDTD) project was undertaken to improve educational services to adults with learning disabilities. During the project, learners and tutors from six community-based literacy programs across Virginia volunteered to share their experiences as they participated in pilot testing…

In 1997, the South West Institute of TAFE (Technical and Further Education) in Victoria, Australia, and Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology jointly developed an online workplace delivery model for administrative and clerical workers. The model was aligned with national standards encompassing the formal qualifications for four certificates in…

This document contains 12 papers about lifelong learning in rural communities in Great Britain. The papers, which are intended for lecturers, tutors, and guidance professionals but may also prove useful to organizations providing lifelong learning and policymakers, include conceptual tools as well as empirical case studies documenting lifelong…