Adult learners are attracted to learning opportunities (e.g. course offers) which seem promising in terms of allowing them to match their choices to their own perceived predispositions. To find out more about their personal learning style, some adult learners may fill in a questionnaire designed by researchers who aim (and claim) to enable both…

Foreign language aptitude is defined as one's potential to learn a second language. A language learner with higher aptitude is predicted to learn more, faster, and reach a higher level of proficiency. If this is the case, one way to validate the construct of aptitude and its measure is to conduct a validation study in which measures of aptitude is…

The Adult Mentoring Assessment for Extension Professionals will help mentors develop an accurate profile of their mentoring style with adult learners and identify areas of proficiency and deficiency based on six constructs--relationship, information, facilitation, confrontation, modeling, and vision. This article reports on the reliability of this…

In the assessment of aural skills of second language learners, the study of the inclusion of visual stimuli has almost exclusively been conducted in the context of listening assessment. While the inclusion of contextual information in test input has been advocated for by numerous researchers (Ockey, 2010), little has been said regarding the…

Teaching style has been a popular concept for many years. Teaching style refers to the distinct qualities displayed by a teacher that are persistent from situation to situation regardless of the content. The Principles of Adult Learning Scale (PALS) has been used extensively in the West for measuring teaching style in relationship to the adult…

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of cognitive curiosity through the development and validation of items that identify specific-epistemic, diversive-epistemic, specific-perceptual, and diversive-perceptual factors of curiosity. The instrument was based on existing research that identifies each of the four hypothesized…

Responding to Field's criticism of the Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale (SDLRS), Guglielmino cites evidence supporting the scale's validity and reliability, Long notes gaps in Field's literature review, and McCune critiques Field's approach to factor analysis in testing the scale. (SK)

This research emerged from an effort to develop a theory of computer anxiety relevant to beginning adult learners in a range of university disciplines. To this end, the first step was to design and refine an instrument which was reliable and valid for this population. The development of the "a priori" model of computer anxiety used in this study…

Examines claims that unconscious second language learning under implicit and incidental conditions is insensitive to measures of individual differences in cognitive abilities, in contrast to learning under conscious rule-search and instructed conditions. Findings revealed that only in the incidental condition was the extent of learning and…

This paper addresses the issue of whether four of the learning styles instruments currently available are of sufficient psychometric quality to warrant their continued use either for research or educational purposes. Four instruments, which purport to measure learning styles, were selected for review. Criteria for selection were based in part on…

Theoretical framework, instrument development, and psychometric qualities are reviewed for some measures of learning style currently in use with adults. Instruments reviewed include: (1) Kolb's Learning Style Inventory I; (2) Kolb's Learning Style Inventory II; (3) the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator; (4) the Productivity Environmental Preferences…

The Principles of Adult Learning Scale (PALS) was developed and validated for measuring congruency between adult education practitioners' actual observable classroom behavior and their expressed belief in the collaborative teaching-learning mode. This model is a learner-centered instruction method in which learner and practitioner share authority…

The following papers are included: "Preface" (Huey B. Long); "Self-Directed Learning: Smoke and Mirrors?" (Huey B. Long); "From Self-Culture to Self-Direction: An Historical Analysis of Self-Directed Learning" (Amy D. Rose); "The Link between Self-Directed and Transformative Learning" (Jane Pilling-Cormick);…