Today's information technology-based economy makes job-related knowledge and workplace skills obsolete faster than ever before. As a result, many adults are heading back to school, often because of the demands of the marketplace that has little place for those without current credentials. (Author/JOW)

Unsuccessful mature applicants to University College Dublin (n=74) identified barriers encountered in the application process: low number of older applicants admitted due to demand from younger applicants; lack of standardized assessments for mature applicants; and lack of recognized access routes. (SK)

Holistic teaching and learning must be concerned with the spiritual lives of adult educators and learners. Educators should design processes that invite the involvement of the whole person while leaving room for diversity and mystery. (Author/SK)

A survey of 82 adults in noncredit programs on the arts and lifelong learning and interviews with 25 identified their motivations and outcomes. They valued noncredit learning for the opportunity to try something new in a nonthreatening environment. These learning opportunities benefited their social involvement, health, and well-being. (SK)

This article focuses on the recognition of prior learning and the figure of thought it represents in Swedish policy on adult education. It can be seen as a technique for governing the adult learner and a way of fabricating the subject. We are tracing this thought back in time to see how it has changed and what it consists of. The material analysed…

A shared document-based annotation tool was presented, and its usefulness in two different real-life web-based university-level courses (adult learners, n = 27 and adolescent learners, n = 23) was empirically investigated. The study design embodied three data collection phases: (1) a pretest measuring self-rated motivation, learning strategies,…

The purpose of this study was to describe the current practices (band setup, musical instruction, member interactions, and challenges) of adult beginning instruction in ensemble settings. Subjects in the current study were 35 adult band/orchestra directors from 19 US states and one province. The responding directors were 24 men and 11 women…

This paper reports a study in which Iranian EFL female students' think aloud protocols were analyzed to find out what knowledge sources informed them as they tried to make lexical inference when reading an English text. The study also intended to find out if students' level of their L2 proficiency would affect the pattern of their use of the…

This issue of "The Progress of Education Reform" will address the following three questions: (1) What are the challenges that developmental education programs face that affect their success? (2) Are developmental education programs an effective strategy for increasing college attainment rates? and (3) How can state policy improve the…

Many adults in OECD countries have low language, literacy and numeracy (LLN) skills. The consequences of these low foundation skills span the economic, health and social well-being of individuals, families and communities. Investment in this sector of adult education is therefore crucial. This study looks specifically inside the programmes for…

What constitutes successful practice for supervision of postgraduate students at an Open and Distance learning institution? In this article I describe a limited experiment in on-line teaching using a group of postgraduate students at the University of South Africa (Unisa). While the experiment has obvious limitations including the short time in…

Four cases relating to the efforts of e-learning teams in valuing adult learners in their e-learning solutions were examined to better understand how e-learning teams value their adult learners within corporate settings. Two questions guided the analysis of the cases, they are: (1) What is the nature of the e-learning solutions in these cases? (2)…

Taking advantage of the continuously improving, web-based learning systems plays an important role for self-learning, especially in the case of working people. Nevertheless, learning systems do not generally adapt to learners' profiles. Learners have to spend a lot of time before reaching the learning goal that is compatible with their knowledge…

This module provides teachers with practical tools to improve the quality of teaching and learning activities and enable learners to achieve their objectives in literacy, language and numeracy. Unit 1 explores approaches that are particularly appropriate to adult learners, developing thinking skills and involving them in decision making and…

"Beating the Drums for Attention" is the metaphorical title chosen to reflect the continuous effort carried out by adult educators to promote learning, to encourage a joyful approach to it and to motivate learners to be part of and actively influence the overall reflexive process they are involved in. What carries the whole movement is…