Stress in adult learners is a neglected topic, despite practitioners observing that their adult learners often display psychological discomfort. We address the effects psychological stress has on learning, then define the constructs of stress, trauma, resilience, and psychological distress. Twenty-three adult learners reading at elementary levels…

Innovation is a ubiquitous term, and its use to promote neoliberal values such as competition, efficiency and its privileging of technology driven initiatives has been critiqued by educational researchers, including adult literacy researchers. This article argues that innovation in adult literacy (and perhaps in education generally) is a concept…

Job automation can undermine economic security for workers in general, and older workers, in particular. In this respect, consistently updating one's knowledge and skills is essential for being competitive in a technology-driven labor market. Older workers with lower adult literacy skills experience difficulties with continuous education and…

Immigrants in their later years can succeed at learning English and becoming citizens if they have access to instruction that considers their particular interests and stage of development, including their distinct cognitive, physical, and psychological profiles. Step One, a new age-friendly curriculum, helps older newcomers take the first steps in…

High-level literacy skills are required for full participation in the democratic process through voting. Consequently, adults with low-level literacy skills are at a disadvantage. This work investigated the disparity between the readability of U.S. ballot propositions for year 2022 state elections and grade level reading estimates ([less than or…

The International Literacy Day 2023 was the first after the launch the text generating artificial intelligence ChatGPT. This was the reason for a Literacy Promptathon that allows users to learn how to handle text and image generation. The International Literacy Day media coverage for the first time touched on the question of AI generated text. One…

For nearly a decade, concerns about misinformation influencing U.S. elections have grown. As modern elections are increasingly characterized by overwhelming amounts of information, trust in the media is at an all-time low, with people across the political spectrum reporting low confidence in the mass media's ability to report the news "fully,…

This paper uses a thematic narrative analysis approach to explore the experiences of individuals who support those living with literacy gaps in Australia. Themes of collective shame and responsibility surrounding adult literacy gaps, as well as the communicative expertise and critical reflexivity developed by supporters in their roles, are…

The purpose of this study was to (a) examine the underlying assessment structure of the Derivational Morphology Task (DMORPH) and (b) investigate the relation of the DMORPH to vocabulary and reading comprehension outcomes with a sample of struggling adult readers. Specifically, participants included 218 struggling adult readers enrolled in adult…

Snyder's hope theory depicts hope, through the frame of positive psychology, as a cognitive construct with the perceived sense of goal-directed, pathways, and agency thinking (Snyder et al., 1991). Hope levels have been measured in various countries; however, no research to date focused on Haitians. This study, conducted in Petit-Goâve, Haiti,…

Much is known about the literacies of early life, adolescence and some aspects of adulthood such as workplace literacies, but there has been a dearth of attention to the literacies of late life. The invisibility of these literacies has the potential to skew how curricula, pedagogy and policy developers understand and plan for literacies that can…

Previous research based on large-scale studies consistently suggests that on average, male students tend to have lower literacy compared to their female students during secondary schooling. However, this gender gap in literacy seems to "disappear" during adulthood. Up until today, only a few studies investigated the role of assessment…

Literacy skills can assist in the navigation and enjoyment of adult life. For individuals who have reached adulthood without strong literacy skills, opportunities for continued literacy learning are few. Redesigning AAC technologies to support literacy skill development could extend literacy learning opportunities for adults with developmental…

There is a growing trend of states offering alternative pathways towards a high school equivalency outside of the traditional standardized test. Amidst this landscape, this study utilizes elements of teaching inquiry, participatory action research, and qualitative methods, to investigate the outcomes of using multimodal play in a composition unit…

Despite rapid advances, modeling a variety of instructional designs to support variations in teaching and learning during the design of educational technologies is still an open challenge. In this paper, we propose a patterns based approach for the design of educational technologies to address this challenge. This is in contrast with existing…