Interviews with seven working-class adults suggest a need to understanding adult-learning patterns within the life context; they demonstrate how gender and class experiences affect learning and attitudes toward education. Pressuring adults into formal credentialing education would not necessarily be appropriate, and may be seen as oppressive. (SK)

The research reported in this paper attempts to document the actual learning practices of working-class people in the context of the much heralded "knowledge-based economy." Our primary thesis is that working-class peoples' indigenous learning capacities have been denied, suppressed, degraded or diverted within most capitalist schooling,…

Adult education in the United Kingdom is historically associated with working-class movements in the nineteenth century. In recent years, however, with the popularity of postmodernism, social class has become a neglected concept among sociologists and adult educators. Wider participation strategies have increased the number of adult students…

Researchers explored the relationships between the great working class communities and the industries they sustained and were sustained by in terms of production, storage, and transmission of skills. First, the ethnographic literature on industrial workplaces and the working class communities associated with them was reviewed. Next, lengthy…

The benefits of sectoral workforce development programs to the working poor were examined in a 3-year longitudinal study of participants in six sectoral employment training programs across the United States. The programs, which were all designed to serve low-income clients, provided training in a diverse set of industries, including the following:…