People learn language variation through exposure to linguistic interactions. The way we take part in these interactions is shaped by our lexical representations, the mechanisms of language processing, and the social context. Existing work has looked at how we learn and store variation in the ambient language. How this is mediated by the social…

This article presents findings from an online early intervention orientation program developed to provide one state with an economical and systematic means for onboarding new early intervention providers, administrators, and service coordinators. The quantitative findings suggest the courses were a successful method of delivering training to…

The present study seeks to develop a situated construct of learner engagement within an instructional experience. Despite compelling potential benefits to instructional practice, extant learner engagement research has been limited to either within-the learner constructs or adding a simplistic behavioral component to a model and largely discounting…

Adult learners are attracted to learning opportunities (e.g. course offers) which seem promising in terms of allowing them to match their choices to their own perceived predispositions. To find out more about their personal learning style, some adult learners may fill in a questionnaire designed by researchers who aim (and claim) to enable both…

Transformative learning (TL) goals are becoming commonplace in higher education, continuing education, and other adult learning contexts; however, valid and reliable assessments of TL are not so common. This imbalance begs the development of assessment methods that allow for a deeper understanding of how, when, and why deep reshaping of self takes…

Foreign language aptitude is defined as one's potential to learn a second language. A language learner with higher aptitude is predicted to learn more, faster, and reach a higher level of proficiency. If this is the case, one way to validate the construct of aptitude and its measure is to conduct a validation study in which measures of aptitude is…

The Adult Mentoring Assessment for Extension Professionals will help mentors develop an accurate profile of their mentoring style with adult learners and identify areas of proficiency and deficiency based on six constructs--relationship, information, facilitation, confrontation, modeling, and vision. This article reports on the reliability of this…

There exists cross-cultural differences in English classes regarding the factors that demotivate students and lead to dropout. The present study, following the guidelines suggested by Rowsell (1992), mainly aimed to design and validate a questionnaire for the reasons for dropout. To do so, the researchers, first, interviewed with 20 translation…

This chapter proposes approaches for assessing learners and evaluating courses and curriculum that could be used by directors of health professions education (HPE) programs to determine the effectiveness and impact of their programs.

Selecting assessments for adults who struggle with reading can be difficult because few literacy measures used by reading researchers have been normed on this population, leaving uncertainty regarding the validity of these tests for adult learners. This study focused on the performance of 116 adults reading between the 3rd and 8th grade levels on…

Selecting assessments for adults who struggle with reading can be difficult because few literacy measures used by reading researchers have been normed on this population, leaving uncertainty regarding the validity of these tests for adult learners. This study focused on the performance of 116 adults reading between the 3rd and 8th grade levels on…

Teaching style has been a popular concept for many years. Teaching style refers to the distinct qualities displayed by a teacher that are persistent from situation to situation regardless of the content. The Principles of Adult Learning Scale (PALS) has been used extensively in the West for measuring teaching style in relationship to the adult…

Universities are inundated with detailed applicant and enrolment data from a variety of sources. However, for these data to be useful there is a need to convert them into strategic knowledge and information for decision-making processes. This study uses predictive modelling to identify at-risk adult learners in their first semester at SIM…

Besides work-oriented training, most Dutch adult learning courses of formal and non-formal education focus on three basic skills: literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments. In the Netherlands, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science recently initiated the development of a new adult education framework concerning…

Background: Despite the importance of lifelong learning as a key to individual and societal prosperity, we know little about adult motivation to engage in learning across the lifespan. Building on educational psychological approaches, this article presents a measure of Motivation-to-Learn using four items from the background questionnaire of the…