Types of non-formal adult education in the USA and Canada are singled out. Non-formal adult education in the United States and Canada is subdivided into basic adult education, education for professional development, education for personal development, specialized adult education, education for the development of civil society (constituents of…

This article reviews teacher professional development norms as they are shifting toward collaborative practice. It is posed that passive and individual practices are inadequate to prepare teachers to integrate the academic skills that learners need for both workforce and college readiness. Promising practices in professional development are…

Adult English language learners who lack print literacy or experience with formal education encounter a unique set of challenges in their lives and their efforts to learn English. Educators and policymakers are similarly challenged by how best to help these adults acquire English literacy. This paper reviews a variety of research, including that…

The Breaking Through (BT) initiative of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation seeks to prepare low-skilled adults, adult learners who are below college-level in reading, writing and/or mathematics, often lacking a high school diploma, and frequently low-income, to be successful in college and the labor market by strengthening and expanding policies…

Although information and communication technologies have become an integral part of life in the United States, they have not yet been adequately integrated into adult language and literacy programs. This raises concerns because of the potential value of technology for enhancing learning and because of the vital role of technological proficiency as…

An evaluation was conducted of the effectiveness of the Adult Educators Development Project (AEDP) at Lehman College of the City University of New York, a 3-year professional development program combining meetings, research projects, site visits, reading, and writing that was designed to facilitate the professional development of instructors in…

If Australia's adult educators involved in adult literacy, language, and numeracy provision are to initiate significant changes in the inequalities existing in Australian society, they must examine a range of issues extending far beyond classroom walls. Much discussion about workplace communication in recent years has evolved from the growing…

When Shanahan, Meehan, and Mogge (1994) reviewed the issue of professionalization, they characterized previous discussions and debates as controversial, negative, and heated, marked more by discord than unity. A key point of disagreement was whether or under what conditions certification could be considered necessary or desirable. They found only…

The Equipped for the Future (EFF) framework describes adult performance along these four dimensions: structure of the knowledge-base; fluency of performance; independence of performance; and range of conditions for performance. When completed it will include a developmental sequence of descriptions of learner performance for each EFF standard;…

Project Educational Quality in Adult Literacy (EQuAL) was initiated to improve the quality of adult basic and literacy education (ABLE) services provided to adult learners in Pennsylvania. Project EQuAL's objectives were as follows: (1) set performance standards to facilitate delivery of quality ABLE programs to adult learners; (2) institute a…

The quarterly theme-based publication "Focus on Basics" was launched in January 1997 as part of a multipronged effort by the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy to connect research and practice in the field of adult basic education (ABE). The effectiveness of "Focus on Basics" as a means of professional…

The prospects for disseminating research to the field of adult basic education and literacy (ABE&L) were assessed by interviewing about 60 ABE&L decision makers and practitioners from 10 different states about their work and information needs. The decision makers set ABE&L policy in states or regions and/or supervised teachers and…