Project APEX (Adult Practitioner Excellence) provided technical assistance to the Pennsylvania Department of Education in the development of a nominations form, procedures, and criteria for the new adult basic and literacy education (ABLE) practitioner excellence awards. It proposed a three-part nomination and selection system for determining…

This document consists of a final report and two manuals developed by the Pennsylvania State Coalition for Adult Literacy's Building Communities for Learning (BCL) project, which worked to improve the delivery of adult basic and literacy education services through interagency collaboration and community-based planning at the local level. The final…

This instructor's guide contains materials for a 40-hour course that explores interpersonal communication and improves participants' ability to communicate with fellow workers and family members. A title page provides a course description with target audience and general objective. An introduction covers design of the 10-week course, with 2 2-hour…

Project WORKSMART was a Nashville, Tennessee-based workplace literacy project to provide an exemplary multidimensional workplace literacy program while simultaneously demonstrating products and practices that promote lifelong learning that can be customized and replicated in diverse work environments. The project was a partnership between…

This curriculum guide is the result of stories that students in workplace education classes have created in class and chosen to publish. The learners for whom this curriculum is designed are adult students voluntarily enrolled in a workplace education class in which the focus is literacy or basic skills training. Contents include the following:…

Most corporate funds for workplace literacy programs are invested in intermediate literate workers. Questions regarding these learners concern what should be expected of them; what they should expect of workplace literacy programs; who or what should determine these criteria; and ramifications of the answers. Issues that affect the answers are the…

The purpose of this booklet is to provide literacy instructors and tutors with information on adults with learning disabilities and their needs within literacy programs. It defines learning disabilities and describes characteristics of adults with learning disabilities, emphasizing that, for tutors, the issue is how to determine whether the…

This project report explores the potential of using the strategies and methods of the Reading Recovery Program to teach adult nonreaders. The following assessment procedures assist the tutor in determining the student's reading level: letter identification, reading vocabulary, concepts about print, writing vocabulary, dictation, and text reading.…

This report describes presentations and discussions at a seminar to bring together research initiatives in the area of functional literacy and to explore appropriate ways of developing policy-driven research in all countries. Opening remarks by representatives of the European Community, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,…

Empowering grassroots efforts in literacy is paramount in the literacy education movement. Six issues face literacy work, research, and policy in the United States today: (1) although there are many exciting and innovative literacy projects being conducted, their lessons are unexamined and they are not part of a larger organizing strategy; (2)…

This handbook brings together information on the who, what, where, when, why, and how of adult basic education (ABE) research in Australia. Chapter 1 describes the ABE Research Project that developed this handbook. It summarizes the rationale and context for the project, describes its aims and content, provides details of the information gathering…

A workplace literacy project to prepare Houston Lighting and Power Company employees for the commercial driver's licence (CDL) exam was evaluated. The following four components of Steele's (1990) evaluation model were used to evaluate the project: proof of effect, judgment against criteria, critical questions, and valuing. The evaluation revealed…

An examination of the effects of the Adult Education Act (AEA) 25 years after its passage reveals the growth of the adult basic education (ABE) enterprise in the United States. The AEA provides funding to states to develop and maintain adult basic education programming. Because ABE was recognized as a means of improving the economic status of the…

The evolution of the Adult Education Act (AEA) in the last 25 years illustrates the progress of adult basic education (ABE) in the United States. A detailed look at the literature and outcomes of AEA-funded projects provides a sense of the effectiveness of 25 years of federal involvement. The passage of the AEA in 1966 led to the first systematic…

A 2-year developmental project was designed to accomplish the following: (1) identify screening and assessment procedures appropriate for adults with learning disabilities; (2) determine training requirements for volunteer tutors matched one-to-one with learning disabled adults; (3) determine support services required by adults with learning…