This article explores the disjuncture between refugee's pre-migratory educational aspirations and their everyday encounters with urban public schools. This study engages with two main questions: How do refugee youth's experiences with their urban public schools act as barriers to their educational aspirations? How do these experiences inform their…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the experiences of 12 adult online General Educational Development (GED) students to determine the role of program and personal factors that influenced their successful passing of the GED or their dropping-out of the program. Through surveys and interviews, we discovered that desire was the key factor for…

This article draws on Foucault's later work to consider in an exploratory but specific way how that work can inform educational research. It introduces the concepts of "capillary discourses" and "fissure points" to show, by way of example, how a regime of truth such as neoliberalism shapes lifelong learning theory, the pedagogy…

This article presents evaluation data regarding the MAPIS3 architecture which is proposed as a solution for the data-transfer among various tools to promote flexible collaborative learning designs. We describe the problem that this architecture deals with as "tool orchestration" in collaborative learning settings. This term refers to a…

Community colleges and Adult Basic and Literacy Education (ABLE) programs developed partnerships to improve access to post-secondary education for adult learners and General Educational Development (GED) recipients. However, the number of students that use the GED to gain access to college is disproportionately low compared to the quantity of GED…

Culturally-responsive pedagogies require moving beyond blanket assumptions about learners to focus deeply on local meaning-makings. This narrative analysis case study examines the ways a 20-year-old African American man challenges the negative educational identity with which he is forced to contend as he navigates a large and complex urban public…

Adult education has been available so that immigrants can assimilate into American culture by acquiring the English language skills and vocational skills that they can use for employment. However adult education programmers encounter problems regarding student retention. Evening adult programs have had several problems. The Latino adult students…

In this selection, the author provides a re-representation of data that honors the voice of participants, allowing readers the opportunity to draw their own interpretations about what the participants' lived experiences mean. Developed from a study designed to explore the lived experiences of 18- to 25-year-olds transitioning from high school…

In 2004, Boston Public Schools reported that more than 8% of its students dropped out of school that year. The city faced a crisis. Thousands of students were failing to earn a high-school diploma, a necessary credential for entrance into postsecondary education and/or the twenty-first century workforce. Factors driving students' decisions to…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the challenges and solutions encountered by Adult Basic Education (ABE) programs currently serving older adults seeking a GED credential in states where this is the only high school equivalency option available. The following questions guided this research: (1) what are the perceived characteristics and…

Using Kegan's constructive-developmental theory, this study examines transformative learning among six low-income and homeless women of Color pursuing their GED in a shelter-based literacy program. Narrative analysis of two developmental interview instruments indicated that some participants' epistemological perspectives and knowledge construction…

This study explores schooling in prison for young Chicano bilingual men as they work toward their GED. Using Gee's notion of "mushfaking," the study focuses on the experiences of two young men, Benny and Flaco, who partially acquire, use, value, and believe in the power of academic register Discourses for "sounding smart" in a…

This paper looks at the perspectives of 22 young adults concerning their upbringings and life experiences, experiences in inner city and suburban schools, after leaving school, and later in a privately funded urban GED preparation facility in a large southern city. Specifically it addresses the conceptions students have about school and their…

While there is a considerable body of literature on adult correctional education, this literature almost exclusively deals with teachers and students working within incarceration settings, where students are in jail or prison. There is a lack of research on the experiences of teachers working with students who are a part of the correctional system…

As one of the few qualitative studies on this topic, this phenomenological study examined how parolees experience participation in a community college reentry program. One-on-one interviews were conducted with 11 parolee college students. Major themes found that parolees enjoy the college environment and that they have become role models for their…