Adult Basic Education (ABE) and the General Equivalency Diploma (GED) programs serve those students who, for whatever reason, have left the educational system without attaining a regular high school diploma. Because of the manner in which they may have left the school system, many have negative emotions and personal agency beliefs hindering their…

Adults with learning disabilities (LD) attending adult basic education, GED programs, or community colleges are among the lowest performers on measures of literacy. For example, on multiple measures of reading comprehension, adults with LD had a mean reading score at the third grade level, whereas adults without LD read at the fifth grade level.…

In 2006, this author decided to make multiple intelligences (MI)-inspired "activity menus" a regular part of her ESOL/Civics classes. She first tried this technique in a single class session to review what students had learned about industrialization, and it was a huge success. Since 2006, the author has introduced MI-inspired activity…

In 1979, when the author began as an academic instructor at the Central Coast Adult School, located inside the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo, California, he saw his teaching role in the traditional sense of imparting knowledge through the school's curriculum. Over time, however, his viewpoint changed as he came to recognize that the…

This study investigated informal learning activities among low-education adults, using data from the 2005 National Household Education Survey. Survey respondents were asked about their participation in six types of informal learning activities, from reading books to using computers to attending conventions. Respondents with the lowest educational…

In their chapter on numeracy, the authors begin by exploring the many terms used to describe the learning of mathematics by adults. They discuss the relationship between the terms "mathematics" and "numeracy" and explain why numeracy--making meaning with numbers and mathematical processes--is the term they chose for their…

The growing number of youth enrolling in adult literacy education is a little-documented trend across the nation that is having a major impact on programs in some areas but appears to be unnoticed by educational policymakers and researchers. A central question is whether youth enrollments provide an opportunity for adult literacy education to…