In further education (FE), teachers and trainers are not legally required to undertake continuing professional development (CPD), with this mandate removed in 2013. Nevertheless, the Education and Training Foundation has emphasised the importance of maintaining and updating professional knowledge. Literature highlights CPD's contentious role among…

The problem at the southeastern university study site is that adult nontraditional learners taking classes on campus are graduating at a low rate, which may indicate a lack of needed support services. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore the learning support needs of adult nontraditional learners and institutional support…

This study explored English Language Learner (ELL) immigrant students' barriers to accessing postsecondary education at four-year colleges and universities in the post-COVID-19 era. Grounded in Cross's (1981) conceptual framework, which categorizes barriers adult learners face in higher education as institutional, situational, and dispositional,…

Imagine having to abandon your home and all that is familiar in search of safety. How would you perceive yourself in a new country, learning a new language and trying to build a new life? Millions of people around the world have experienced this reality, thousands of whom are currently living throughout the United States. Since more than half of…

There has been an increasing effort to deliver Education in Emergencies (EiE) from the international community since the 1990s because of protracted humanitarian situations. Despite the growing attention to EiE, many children in conflict-affected situations miss schooling without having the opportunity to receive a second chance education (SCE),…

Adult learners come to the learning experience from diverse backgrounds, myriad experiences, interests, and preferences for perceiving information, engaging with the learning, and expressing what they know. To ensure equitable learning outcomes, these dimensions of predictable variability must be proactively designed for in the curriculum. While…

Internships are considered "high-impact practices" offering students transformative opportunities to develop new skills and professional identities while immersed in workplace culture. They have also been pinpointed as key to improving student success and employment within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.…

A subset of individuals with learning disabilities is currently prevented from accessing postsecondary education; these individuals experience general learning disabilities, or GLD (Greenspan, 2017, p. 117). GLD is not a formal disability category in K-12 special education; individual students might not be eligible for academic supports and…

Participation in adult learning and education requires the availability of, and accessibility to, learning opportunities provided by educational institutions. One fundamental element is time. Adult learning and education participation can only be realized by successfully matching individual time-availabilities with the temporal organization of…

Higher education opens doors to job enhancement and economic benefits to adult learners. Despite facing multiple barriers such as life-work-school time conflicts and financial constraints, adult learners continue to seek higher education and certifications. Rural employers also benefit from supporting degree completion or job-specific…

This spotlight discusses the critical role of immigrants in the U.S. labor market and the importance of services that support their economic integration. Immigrants represent a significant and growing portion of the U.S. workforce and are essential for addressing labor market needs, especially in multilingual and diverse roles. The workforce…

The incorporation of digital technologies into adult education classrooms has seen steady growth for over two decades. Many computer-based applications are used for skills development, practice, and other activities inside and outside the classroom. Despite such integration, the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly affected in-person learning, catching…

Purpose: To uncover age inequalities in participation in higher education (HE) in Spain, the socio-demographic profile of Spanish adult undergraduates is compared to that of the general population of the same age group (25-54). Specific attention is devoted to differentials between face-to-face and distance adult students.…

From November 2015 to October 2020, Canada had welcomed 44,620 Syrian refugees to more than 350 communities across the country. In 2019, it further surpassed the United States and Australia in the number of refugees settled. Lacking the necessary language skills for living and working in a new country is one of the most critical barriers refugees…

In this study, the researcher explored the experiences of adult learners in Nigerian universities using smartphones and mobile learning applications to access, facilitate, and enhance learning. The study focused on how these technologies impact students' learning, particularly seamless access to numerous learning resources, enjoyment, cost, and…