The aim of the research study reported in this article was to investigate how adult learners talk about their emotions in the context of a year-long online course, the first online course these adults take, as part of a distance education program. The theoretical and methodological approach focused on formulating an account of how emotion…

A case study of a tailor-made apprenticeship training program for experienced employees is presented. The existing and aspiring heads, managers, and experts in a single enterprise were offered apprenticeship training for special vocational qualification in engineering. The aim of the case study was to discover participants' views about age,…

This article presents several news stories from the European Prison Education Association (EPEA). These include: (1) The 7th International Conference for Directors of Prison Education held in Malmo, Sweden from September 11-14, 2008; (2) The visit of EPEA representatives to the Modern University of the Humanities (MUH) in Russia to examine how the…

Adult students, whether new or returning to higher education, experience a unique set of transition challenges. This chapter highlights the barriers facing adult students and offers ways to overcome them. For many adult students, returning to college and fulfilling their goals is much like building a house of cards. In order to be successful, each…

Despite the fact that there are nationwide literacy programs in Turkey in order to raise the literacy rate, the participation of illiterate individuals in these programs is not at a satisfactory level. This article is a study into the popular ideas, attitudes, and value patterns that negatively affect participation in literacy programs in a slum…

In the tradition of grassroots environmental movements worldwide, activist Buddhist monks in rural Thailand have, since the late 1980s, led a popular movement to protect local forest, water and land resources while at the same time challenging dominant state and corporate "economist" development paradigms. Most famously, these…

People at the Quality Improvement Agency (QIA) are focused on the adult learning experience wherever it takes place--in classrooms, workshops, training centres, community centres, or at work. They exist to help those who teach to be better at what they do--and those who lead and manage to encourage this improvement--so that learners can receive a…

Although some general practitioners now "prescribe" education to patients it would be wrong to see it as a panacea. Those who claim it can cure everything from memory loss to incontinence are being unduly optimistic. Education is an important mechanism for enhancing the health and well-being of individuals and reducing the health care and…

This narrative describes the growth of an alliance between two indigenous organizations in North and South America, illustrating how a shared indigenous vision of cultural survival and connection to the land led to the creation of an ongoing collaboration for indigenous youth leadership development, which has extended to encompass collaboration…

Many valuable activities and local innovations go on in the field of non-formal adult learning. With the pressures of day-today work it is impossible to have a systematic overview of these, so that they are forgotten and are not continued, developed or passed on to others. More generally, these activities fail to be documented and analysed, even…

Adult learning is now widely seen as a basic human right (the right to learn) and lifelong learning is similarly recognised. Adult learning within a lifelong learning concept has an agenda far wider than just employability skills. Yet educational inequalities between and within nations remain stark, as does the gap between rhetoric and practice in…

Constant and continued upgrade of skills and qualifications is imperative in a knowledge society (Davies, 1998; David and Foray, 2003), however identifying and using effective (maximise retention/recall) and efficient (minimise time to learn) learning practices is often a challenge. Spacing Effect is a robust phenomenon that suggests that the…

The research reported in this study concerns older adults from Australia who voluntarily chose to learn the craft of woodturning. Semi-structured interviews and a survey questionnaire were distributed to members of a woodturning club to explore their motivations and the processes by which they learned how to woodturn. The findings indicated that…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships of learning style characteristics to self-directed learning propensity among adult learners. The learning style characteristics investigated were learning style balance as measured by a scoring method developed by Mainemelis, Boyatzis, and Kolb (2002) and learning style dimensions as…

This issue of "literacy.ca EXPRESS" focuses on the topic of promising practice. Promising or good practice and lessons learned are used to describe useful practices, approaches or ideas. Articles included in this issue: (1) Practitioner Profile: Meet Connie Jones; (2) Highlights from the LAN (Learner Advisory Network); (3) In the…