My PhD explored the professional development needs of teacher educators--the people who teach teachers to teach. In this case study, I discuss my experience of using mixed methods: semistructured interviews, an online survey, and a focus group, with a community of teacher educators in the southeast of England. I wanted to identify the professional…

The present study investigated the needs of adult education staff pertaining to adult students' mental health issues within a local school board. The study utilized mixed-methods design and was divided into progression of three separate studies. An initial focus group was conducted to identify the 12 participants' concerns and provide a direction…

Lesson observation has been widely debated in education circles in recent times. From politicians to practitioners, everyone seems to have a view on it. Surprisingly, however, very little empirical research has been done on this important area of practice. With this in mind, this article explores some of the findings from a national research…

There is an economic gap that favors adults who have higher levels of educational attainment (United States Department of Labor, 2010). With more than 9.3 million Americans over the age of 25 facing unemployment as of June 2012 and over 79% or 7.4 million of those unemployed Americans having attained less than a Bachelor's degree (U.S. Department…

This project applied the gap analysis problem-solving framework (Clark & Estes, 2008) in order to help develop strategies to increase completion rates at Travelor Adult School. The purpose of the study was to identify whether the knowledge, motivation and organization barriers were contributing to the identified gap. A mixed method approached…

The purpose of this mixed method study was to discover how diaconal ministers in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) practice their ministry and describe and understand their role as educators of adults. The theoretical framework of the study was informed by the intersection of critical theory, feminist theory, and liberation…

This article reports on an empirical case study centering on adult ESL learners' motivational patterns for learning English and its relevance to their career goals. It looks at past patterns of immigrant insertion within the socioeconomic context of the US and explores current trends in adult ESL curriculum development focused on the task of…

This paper focuses on recognition of prior learning as part of a national policy based on European Union guidelines for lifelong learning, and it explains how recognition of prior learning has been perceived since it was implemented in Portugal in 2000. Data discussed are the result of a mixed method research project that surveyed adult learners,…

The purpose of this case study using a mixed method approach was to examine the role of that correctional educators in an Arizona state prison based on their challenges, attitudes, and motivations in order to learn how best to prepare people for that role. Although the research on public school teachers and teaching in adult education practices in…

This article reports the results of a study designed to determine whether the teachings of Confucius (liberal and behavioral teaching approaches) or Western teaching approaches (humanistic, progressive, radical and analytic teaching approaches) shaped adult education in Taiwan. Thirty-nine randomly selected adult educators from three premium…

An indispensable part of any curriculum design in an educational setting is the analysis of the needs of the learners involved in the context. The needs can be addressed from different perspectives. Among them, the learners' needs in terms of their perceptions toward what constitute learning/teaching and testing processes are of prominent values.…

The purpose of this mixed-method descriptive case study is to investigate the role technical assistance providers within the context of one state's large-scale literacy grant program. This study provides an in-depth examination of one state's technical assistance providers known as Reading First Facilitators (RFF) through the study of a group of…