This paper describes part of a study (Kraus 1996) involving 25 school administrators who attended one of five administrator preparation programs at four New England universities. The study addressed research questions regarding perceptions of administrators' job preparedness and how components of formal training programs (i.e., internships,…

Human cognitive system and information processing theories were used as the theoretical base that frames an interpretation of adult literacy research from World War I (WWI) through 1993. These theoretical perspectives are as follows: (1) literacy learning is grounded in a distinct developmental sequence; and (2) literacy learning is dependent on…

A study examined the relationship of personal control-of-learning beliefs (learning locus of control) and three separate components of self-directed learning: cognitive strategy use, metacognitive self-regulation, and resource management. Subjects were 88 undergraduate and 2 graduate students from 3 institutions of higher education in Western New…

Adults are the most rapidly growing population in American higher education. The National Center for Educational Statistics estimates that adult students will be 46% of all enrollments in the 1990s, which is good reason to give careful thought to their specific educational needs. M. Knowles, in "The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species,"…

Adults differ from traditional-age college students in that they are self-directed, they have a rich bank of experiences upon which to draw in learning, they are ready to learn, and they value competence. Adults may learn equally well by performing different learning tasks. Second language learning activities and instructional materials can be…

Among the articles by Sam Brightman collected in this volume from the newsletter, "Adult & Continuing Education Today (ACET)" are the following: "Grown-Ups Ought to Know Better"; "Adult Education: The Only Sure Factor Is Growth"; "Adult Education Important in This Election Year"; "Will Nursery School External Degree Programs Come Next?";…

Eduard Lindeman (1885-1953) is considered a major philosopher of adult education in the United States. Lindeman advocated the use of adult learning groups and believed that adult education was a force for constructive social action. In his most important work, "The Meaning of Adult Education" (1926), Lindeman discussed four principles of…

In 1989, the Southern Conference on Language Teaching (SCOLT) celebrated its silver anniversary at a conference designed to provide participants with an opportunity both to reflect on the past and to look at the future of foreign language teaching and of SCOLT in the light of a quarter century of experience. Seven of the papers in this volume were…

This collection of papers examines the role of adult education in encouraging active citizenship throughout Europe. "Introduction: The Project" (John Field) discusses the context in which the other papers were written and briefly discusses citizenship education and research in Great Britain. "Learning, Education, Citizenship: What…

This research, begun in Fall 1991, explored the learning-to-learn strategies of adult students taking computer conferencing courses for college credit. It investigated how these students define effective learning and how they direct their own learning and lifestyles to meet the unique demands of this medium. This research gathered data through…

In February 1990, the largest national sample survey of adult participation in learning ever undertaken in Great Britain was conducted. Interviews were conducted with 4,608 people aged 17 and over in England, Wales, and Scotland. The research was designed to provide comparable information to the largest previous study, which was carried out 10…

A study determined the learning (achievement) of 151 participants in the 1992-93 Ohio pesticide applicator training (PAT) program. It assessed the intended level of cognition of instruction and the actual cognition level achieved by the participants. All participants were pre- and posttested using questions adapted from Hall and Prochaska (1991),…

In the fields of adult literacy and adult learning, most researchers have focused on the acquisition of various skills and abilities. Very little attention has been devoted to skill retention. Without more research information, it is difficult to know whether the literacy skills learned in the nation's adult education programs are likely to be…

The 15 chapters in this book include commentaries on 12 seminal works on self-directed learning (SDL) by Houle, Knowles, Tough, Spear and Mocker, Brookfield, Caffarella and O'Donnell, and Long et al. These works were identified by a Delphi panel of 49 experts. Chapter titles and authors are as follows: "An Introduction to the Study of…

Dynamic Concept Analysis (DCA) is introduced as a means of building conceptual models in case studies and using information of concept relations in developing general and individual models to depict a particular phenomenon. DCA enables holistic studies of complex phenomena and analyzes the relationships between concepts to express these relations…