Many rural communities have a pool of mature-aged local people seeking a career change or better lifestyle, which inevitably involves reskilling or upskilling. These people have strong local ties and are committed to their community. University enabling programs provide a bridge to higher education. This longitudinal study explores the impact on…

The Michigan Center for Student Success commissioned this study to determine whether strategies employed to improve adult students' success at 41 Breaking Through colleges nationwide have taken root at Michigan's original colleges and spread beyond them. A statewide survey revisited four of the colleges profiled in previous publications, and the…

The Lipscomb University Adult Degree Program exemplifies how a centralized governance system can benefit nontraditional college students and promote cross-departmental interactions. The two-person staff of the adult program at Lipscomb University envisions a number of potential benefits of having a much larger staff. However, such a programmatic…

This research is rooted in an approach that sees English learning and teaching as practices shaped by adults' funds of knowledge and adult-learning principles. We investigate how English-literacy instruction can build on the funds of knowledge (life experiences, knowledge, skills, and learning habits) that adult learners bring with them. In…

One crucial issue in mathematics development is how children come to spontaneously apply arithmetical principles (e.g. commutativity). According to expertise research, well-integrated conceptual and procedural knowledge is required. Here, we report a method composed of two independent tasks that assessed in an unobtrusive manner the spontaneous…

Adults with an intellectual disability have poorer diets than the general adult population. The "Able 2 Cook 4 Health" cookery course aims to improve the diets of adults with mild to moderate intellectual disability. This study aims to evaluate the course by obtaining the views of course participants and the views of managers hosting the…

The integration of e-learning within a distance learning program helps to foster greater interaction among learners who are geographically distant from one another. Various ways have been implemented to achieve this aim, one of which is the use of online forum. Research shows that the use of online forum is capable of fostering a sense of learning…

This paper is a review of literature devoted to the unique information needs and information-seeking behavior of the growing nontraditional or mature community college student population. This underserved user group faces distinctive challenges that librarians, researchers, and administrators must recognize and address. Much of the existing…

The credential landscape of vocational and higher education in the UK has expanded in recent years, alongside a rise in the number of students undertaking qualifications and a steady increase in tuition fees. The transition from an apprenticeship to higher education is one example of the progression from vocational to higher education. However,…

This paper reviews the foundational literature of contemporary e-learning, with a focus on scaffolding, instructional design, and engagement. These concepts are then considered in two limited case studies, each involving e-learning and adult learners--in particular, nurse-learners. The first case study describes the use of a scaffolding model…

This article presents empirical research exploring adult returner students' patterns of learning via qualitative analysis of a series of semi-structured interviews. Interviewees' comments shed light on the relation between patterns of learning on the one hand, and study skills, epistemological issues and attitudes to peer interaction on the other.…

This study focuses on institutional barriers that adult learners experience while participating in higher education programmes. We developed a holistic measure of diversification, accessibility, flexibility and affordability of higher education for adults. Based on pre-economic-crisis data across Europe we then explored the impact of macro-level…

In early stages of classroom language learning, many adult second language (L2) learners communicate primarily with one another, yet we know little about which speech stream characteristics learners tune into or the extent to which they understand this lingua franca communication. In the current study, 25 native English speakers learning German as…

This paper is a reflection, on the basis of empirical research conducted in Italy, on theoretical, methodological and systemic-organisational aspects linked to the recognition and validation of the prior learning acquired by adult learners or workers who decide to enrol at university at a later stage in their lives. The interest in this research…

This article draws on a participatory photography project conducted with 10 socioeconomically disadvantaged adult learners for six weeks within the framework of production pedagogy. Throughout the project, the participants took photographs about their lives in response to three prompts that I gave: (1) take photographs of people that are important…