This chapter describes examples of Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training-funded innovations that resulted in statewide systemic change, including approaches to accelerate adult credential attainment, new approaches to data collection and analysis, enhanced individualized student support, and stronger industry alignment.

Background: "Convivial encounter" provides a new lens for understanding social inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities, characterised by shared activity and friendly interactions with strangers without intellectual disabilities. Places, props and support practices facilitate incidental convivial encounters. This study explored…

An increasing number of universities have implemented prior learning assessment (PLA), but little research has examined the non-course matching approach referred to as block credit PLA. Adult learners pursuing a college degree often bring professional competencies, knowledge, and skills to the classroom. PLA enables adult learners to earn college…

Through 15-plus years of direct experience and research coupled with the concerns and truths of many adult education colleagues, Daquanna Harrison gives a call to action for adult education. This call asks adult educators throughout the U.S. to better and more quickly transform the field of adult education into a viable career choice for minority…

Career and technical education (CTE) -- also known as vocational or technical education -- offers students and young adults a clear, practical route from school to the workforce. It is short and affordable; has low barriers to entry; and directly applies to employers' needs -- often leading to good, in-demand jobs (Carnevale, Jayasundera &…

This paper investigates whether education weakens the relationship between early-life disadvantages and later-life SES. We use three proxies for advantage that we show are independently associated with SES in middle-age. Besides early, favorable family and neighborhood conditions, we argue that the genes a child inherits also represent a source of…

Starting this Parliament, the United Kingdom (UK) Government is providing £2.5 billion (£3 billion when including Barnett funding for devolved administrations) for a new National Skills Fund (NSF). This is a significant investment which has the potential to deliver new opportunities to generations of adults who may have been previously left…

The purpose of this study is to determine how the intersectionality of the variables parental relationships, peer relationships, religiosity and susceptibility of control are predictors of self-control and flourishing in college. Self-control is a predictor of many aspects of flourishing behavior and positive outcomes in college. Understanding…

The preservice preparation and ongoing professional development for instructors of adult emergent bi/multilingual learners (EBLs) in the United States has been characterized as "deeply uneven," lacking uniformity, consistent academic rigor, and practical application to bolster instructors' feelings of self-efficacy and agency in…

Adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) may engage in challenging behavior. These behaviors present challenges to support staff who often lack training in effective behavior management procedures. Behavioral skills training (BST) is an empirically supported method of staff training and has been used to teach support staff a…

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to examine the academic experiences of 11 male Generation Z born between 1995-2012 and describe their undergraduate collegiate experiences by exploring their thoughts and perceptions. The central question is: What are the academic experiences of male undergraduate Generation Z college…

This interpretive case study explores how adults within an intentional learning community make meaning of vocational calling (Dewey, 1966), collective learning (Kilgore, 1999), and a sense of place (Low & Altman, 1992) and the interactive and interrelated connections between these constructs. The context for this study was set at a retreat…

This dissertation focuses on "Community Roots," an instantiation of urban, garden-based environmental education that employs a "critical-transdisciplinary" design framework and pedagogies. The "crit-trans" construct, articulated by the Urban Environmental Studies Research Coven (Strong et. al., 2016) is offered as…

Despite interest in the role of school discipline in the creation of racial inequality, previous research has been unable to identify how students who receive suspensions in school differ from unsuspended classmates on key young adult outcomes. We utilize novel data to document the links between high school discipline and important young adult…

A longstanding challenge for adult education (AE) program staff is how to motivate learners to persist in their studies and connect them to resources that can help mediate their barriers to participation in AE. A promising approach to addressing U.S. high school learners' access to financial aid and enrollment in higher education is…