A research industry is growing fast around the aim of improving teaching and learning for adults. Millions of pounds of public money are being spent on the inspection of adult learning in colleges and adult and community education, and on development projects run by the Learning and Skills Development Agency and the National Institute of Adult and…

The author worked at the sharp end of the steel industry for 25 years having left school with a few O-levels at 16, feeling he had not done well. As an adult learner he re-discovered his academic ability and returned to learning with the Open University in 1977, emerging in 1982 with a 2:1 in Social Sciences. Leaving the steel industry, he took a…

Refugees with higher qualifications often find themselves under-utilised in the only jobs they can get. A project at the University of Sussex explored refugees' own perceptions of the barriers they face and designed a course to address them. This article discusses the research project which was specifically designed to work with refugees who had…

Aspiring teachers are taught the elements of "pedagogy," originally the art and science of teaching children. Many aspects of teaching adults, however, are fundamentally different than those employed in teaching children. In order to acknowledge these differences, a new word--"andragogy"--gained currency in the late 20th century. This article…

If teachers are expected to change their teaching behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs, they need to be involved in interactive, sustained, job-embedded approaches to learning. Research shows how the brain works and what reinforcements it needs to retain information and translate that to practice.

An investigation is described during which three dimensions of situated learning (i.e., social interaction, a reliance on authentic activity, and creation of a learning community) were incorporated into the design and implementation of an on-campus course on instructional strategies for students with diverse learning needs. This choice of pedagogy…

Professional development practices implemented in rural school systems have often led nowhere. These practices seem to produce adult learning activities with few results other than participants' mounting frustration and another innovation left by the wayside. To encourage the development of productive professional development, many studies are…

Despite American schools administrators' refusal to accept the language of African-American students and their overzealousness to frame language and literacy skills in terms of an "achievement gap," African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the language of African-American imagination and reality. This article discusses the characteristics of…

The 285 adult schools in California enrolled 1,206,864 adult learners supported through state apportionment funds in program year 2006-07. This report presents the results of data collected by the Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment Systems (CASAS) from all learners enrolled in California adult schools. The report analysis was prepared by…

Public libraries are a key access point for community-based education for lifelong learners. Libraries link independent learners, materials, programs, and other community agencies, and provide a common touchstone for all segments of the population. The public library and its mission support lifelong learning through the acquisition and…

This document, which is designed for adult literacy practitioners, differentiates between the different types of literacy, explains the principles of neurobiological learning and their relationship to the development of literacy and numeracy skills, and presents a neurobiology-based technique of literacy instruction. The differences between…

This book is designed to help adult educators become skillful in conducting an informal assessment of learning. Chapter 1 gives a background in the basic concepts of assessment and stresses the importance of assessing the design of activities and the behaviors as well as the achievements of learners. Chapter 2 introduces the use of the planning…

Korean society is in the midst of a conflict between modern and postmodern condition. The concept of modernity is rooted in the Enlightenment, which valued reason and proposed the rational and progressive construction and transformation of society and reality. As a result of a rational differentiation between culture and society, modern phenomena…

The question of how the postmodern would have an impact on the everyday concerns of adult educators can be approached through analysis of three fundamental and persistent concerns evident in the literature of adult education pedagogy. First, the idea of autonomous or self-directed learning is firmly entrenched in contemporary thinking about adult…

A study used the Educational Resources and Information Center (ERIC) database as a resource for journal articles on adult education and women since 1971 to examine the recent effort at including inquiry on women and gender in the adult education literature. Once the ERIC database was searched and analyzed for possible trends, a random sample of…