Mass incarceration in America is a moral, economic, and societal crisis with serious implications for many men of color and high school non-completers who are incarcerated at proportionally higher rates than Whites or college graduates. For the formerly incarcerated, engagement in adult learning, whether high school equivalency (HSE) or college,…

In this article, I describe my reflections on developing student authors through a class research project. I review the assignment origins and description and my role in the students' developmental journey from transforming a class assignment to a publishable work. (Contains 1 figure.)

Project Read at the San Mateo Public Library is one of 106 library programs in California helping adults improve their reading, writing, and communication skills. Like many adult literacy programs, Project Read trains and matches volunteer tutors with students. About 30% of the Project Read students are men in Project 90 (P-90), a residential drug…

The "problem-posing" education model of Paulo Freire takes as its departure point the life experience of the learner, rather than the teacher's knowledge. Ursuline College (Cleveland, Ohio) created several courses for returning adult students that were based on Freire's ideas. One course called "Humanities Focus on Life" is for…

The Saturday Writing Workshop Course, a project of The New York Public Library, targeted Adult Basic Education (ABE) students who are unable to attend classes during the week and who are inexperienced writers who are closed out of traditional literacy/ABE programs because they have advanced reading skills. The project served a community of over…

The author uses the diverse role of scribes in different periods of time and different places as a lens through which to understand both literacy and illiteracy. Examples from fiction, film, social history, and interviews with various individuals, including adult literacy teachers, are used to support the following arguments: (1) moments of…