The National Workplace Literacy Program provides grants to partnerships of business, labor, and educational organizations to develop model programs for teaching job-related basic skills. These projects are yielding information about promising practices, effective program elements, and barriers to implementation. (SK)

The Literacy Improvement Needs Collaboration in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was assisted by African-American ministers from the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance in recruiting adults from the community for a literacy program and 50 volunteers to serve as tutors and community liaisons. Some of the stigma of illiteracy was alleviated by using…

In 2005, Jobs for the Future and the National Council for Workforce Education launched "Breaking Through: Helping Low-Skilled Adults Enter and Succeed in College and Careers," with funding from the C.S. Mott Foundation. The goal of the multi-year, college-based initiative is to increase the number of low-skill adults who enter and succeed in…

"In Quest of the Quick Fix: Staff Development in the 'National Literacy Training Act'" (Quigley) argues that professional development programs must consider "literacy for what?""Foundations for Adult Learning and Development Policy" (Craig) evaluates a policy document of the Alberta Advanced Education Ministry. (SK)

A staff development project designed a publication for the effective statewide dissemination of significant current or previous Section 353 special demonstration projects in adult literacy education in Pennsylvania and for the provision of feedback to project directors about their project's strengths and weaknesses. During the project, 72 programs…

A project was undertaken to design an information dissemination newsletter to meet the professional development needs of Pennsylvania's adult basic and literacy education (ABLE) practitioners. It was decided that an 8- to 10-page-long newsletter would be produced for 5 months that included information/articles from as many sources as could be…

A project was conducted to see if computer-assisted instruction could be used successfully with the low-level, non-reading adult. The experimental classroom group consisted of mentally handicapped and other educationally handicapped adults in adult basic education (ABE) programs. (Long-range implementation is aimed at ABE students who have a…

A project was conducted in Pennsylvania to provide technical support to the APEX nomination and awards activity that recognizes outstanding adult education practitioners. The project included a revision of the nomination form and procedures developed for APEX in 1998 to align them with Adult Teacher Competency Standards developed in 1999. The APEX…

This report provides an overview of each of the local consortia projects, the special demonstration and training grants, and statewide activities that took place in Ohio during the July 1, 1993-December 31, 1994, period. Section I contains descriptions of the following: staff development activities developed by 8 individual Adult Basic and…

This guide, based on the Model Workplace Literacy Training Program for Indiana State Employees established at the Indiana Women's Prison in 1991, provides practical advice on developing workplace literacy programs. The guide is organized in six chapters, following an introduction that describes the origins of the Indiana program and outlines the…

Six demonstration projects were conducted in England to identify and help meet the basic communication needs of individuals who embarked on work-related skills training. Unemployed adults were divided into two strands. Strand A concentrated on those adults who without significant help with basic communication skills would be unable to reach the…

This report describes the accomplishments of the National Adult Literacy Project, funded by the National Institute of Education from September 1983 to March 1985 as part of the Adult Literacy Initiative. The project's goal--to assemble and report current information on literacy issues--was achieved through three component efforts: information…

TWELVE RESEARCH REVIEWS IN THIS ISSUE PERTAIN TO YOUTH AND ADULTS UNEMPLOYED OR AT WORK, ONE OF THE MAJOR AREAS OF CONCERN IDENTIFIED BY THE PANEL OF CONSULTANTS ON VOCATIONAL EDUCATION. THEY ARE ORGANIZED UNDER THE TOPICS--(1) EXPANDING EDUCATION AND TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES WHICH INCLUDES PATTERNS OF ADULT INFORMATION SEEKING, PREDICTION OF…

This paper describes seven ideas that would help a literacy program work well. Some examples are given to show how each idea could be used in different parts of a literacy program. Some questions are also listed that could stimulate discussion about each idea. The seven quality guidelines or ideas are as follows: (1) community focus--a good…

A project was conducted to offer customized software to adult basic education (ABE) programs in Pennsylvania and to train the program participants on software customization principles. The project produced an updated list of software publishers and products that can be customized for adult education students. Workshops were presented on…