Staff development continues to be an important but much-debated topic in adult basic education and adult literacy education. Some staff development professionals start with the "deficit" model, in which learners are presumed to be empty vessels to be filled with knowledge. This model ignores the rich and varied experience that practitioners bring…

Childhood sexual abuse research demonstrates that a broad range of social and behavioral deficits may follow the victim into adulthood. Professionals in many service domains, including those in adult learning settings, encounter these deficits in their service populations, often without the benefit of educational background or resources to…

Most instructional efforts in literacy education are aimed at helping learners acquire literacy skills and strategies that will enable them to deal with any text. Readers learn to read by reading, however, so it is important that readers have successful experiences with reading. Success can be fostered by careful selection of reading materials.…

A national research project was conducted in Australia on the professional development needs of curriculum writers, industry trainers, and vocational teachers in relation to the development of language, literacy, and numeracy competence in vocational education and training. Data were collected through the following methods: a review of literature;…

This guide provides information on developing and implementing a class on oral communication for adults in literacy education in Australia. It is organized in five chapters. Chapter 1 puts the course in the context of changes in literacy education policy and provides information on oral communication competencies. Chapter 2 provides the teacher…

The use of six integrated learning systems (ILS) in adult basic education (ABE) programs in British Columbia was analyzed. The systems studied were as follows: Autoskill, Computer Curriculum Corporation (CCC), Jostens (INVEST), Pathfinder, Principle of the Alphabet Literacy System (PALS), and Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations…

This publication is intended to support the effort to focus literacy programs on women. It serves as a guide to the information and resources related to women and literacy and to assist the development of woman-positive programs. The first part of the guide describes the literature base, depicting the subject areas from which the resources are…

This textbook is part of a Mexican series of instructional materials designed for Spanish speaking adults who are in the process of becoming literate or have recently become literate in their native language. It is designed to teach people with developing literacy skills to participate in a meaningful way in the life of their community. Topics…

This report describes a summer project using children's literature as a teaching tool in the literacy section of the Family Literacy Reading Project. The idea for the project arose in response to a need for other resources for the English-as-a-Second-Language program and to students' desire to read to their children and grandchildren as one…

A project was conducted to help parents in adult literacy classes learn how to help their children with mathematics. During the project, numerous kits were created for parent and child to sign out and take home. The kits contain all the materials needed for a mathematical activity, including the mathematics concept targeted in the kit and…

This history of literacy journalism may be summarized as follows. Conceived in the early 1950s through the enthusiasm of Frank C. Laubach, the world's only graduate program for literacy journalism was started when his son, Robert Laubach, came to Syracuse University to study journalism. He was the student/instructor of the first class in 1951 and…

A staff development project designed a publication for the effective statewide dissemination of significant current or previous Section 353 special demonstration projects in adult literacy education in Pennsylvania and for the provision of feedback to project directors about their project's strengths and weaknesses. During the project, 72 programs…

Human cognitive system and information processing theories were used as the theoretical base that frames an interpretation of adult literacy research from World War I (WWI) through 1993. These theoretical perspectives are as follows: (1) literacy learning is grounded in a distinct developmental sequence; and (2) literacy learning is dependent on…

An impact study was conducted of ABC CANADA's LEARN campaign, a national media effort aimed at linking potential literacy learners with literacy groups. Two questionnaires were administered to 94 literacy groups, with 3,557 respondents. Findings included the following: (1) 70 percent of calls to literacy groups were from adult learners aged 16-44;…

A project was undertaken to design an information dissemination newsletter to meet the professional development needs of Pennsylvania's adult basic and literacy education (ABLE) practitioners. It was decided that an 8- to 10-page-long newsletter would be produced for 5 months that included information/articles from as many sources as could be…