This 8-item test is intended to help adult basic education teachers obtain a quick assessment of the prereading skills that their beginning adult readers have already mastered. The individual items of the test are designed to assess the following: ability to write one's own name; left-to-right orientation; perceptual hearing; sound-letter and…

This report provides an overview of the efforts and results of adult basic education centers and classroom teachers and volunteers who provide instruction in the most basic and essential skills for the educationally disadvantaged adults in New York. Charts and graphs illustrate the data that are presented in this photograph-enhanced compilation of…

This paper presents an overview of research on adult learning and suggests strategies for helping adult students to learn. In the first section of the paper, learning and memory are discussed and factors needed for adults to learn the hows and whys of adult motivation are then discussed. The paper next covers the setting of adult learning and the…

This paper suggests techniques that teachers who prepare adult students for the General Educational Development (GED) tests can use with students who have learning disabilities. The first part of the paper presents a brief overview of symptoms exhibited by students who are learning disabled. Symptoms are classified under general behaviors,…

The literature on retention of adult learners strongly suggests that previous educational attainment is closely tied to participation and persistence. Educationally disadvantaged adults are more likely to lack self-confidence and self-esteem, have negative attitudes toward education, and need mastery of basic skills such as literacy before…

A project was conducted to develop, monitor, and evaluate schemes for assessing the prior experiential learning of individuals enrolling in polytechnic institutes and colleges. A total of 12 evaluation schemes at 15 educational institutions throughout Great Britain were examined. The evaluation schemes studied had been developed to assess the…

In the 1980s, nontraditional education is becoming an outdated term, because elements of such education have been integrated into most colleges and universities. The major innovation within nontraditional education is the external degree. Valley developed six major models of external degrees: administrative facilitation, modes of learning, the…

Re-entry female students are unique in one particularly important way: they respond and grow under even the most difficult conditions. The classroom and the text are two contexts in which the factor of gender appears to have affected these students' attitudes toward writing and their expectations as writers. Central to both of these contexts are…

Various terms have been used to describe adult educators, including change agents, facilitators, helpers, leaders, and most typically, teachers. Although advocacy is defined by Webster as the act of pleading the cause of another, or in defending a particular proposal or future, it is obviously a term that can be used to champion the cause of human…

A description is provided of "The Hospice Concept," an elective course offered as part of a two-year college health occupations curriculum. The course is designed to further the students understanding of the multiple facets of death and dying and to prepare them to be hospice volunteers. Following a course description and a glossary of…

This report studied the predictive validity of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) for older students (early twenties to late fifties) at three universities and students' reactions to the admissions process. Analysis supports the use of SATs with local prediction equations. Interviews with older students suggest that their range of circumstances…

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) has been engaged in oral language proficiency testing theory and practice for more than 20 years. The FSI test has been consistent during this time in format, evaluation criteria, performance standards, and level definitions. Current concerns about the degree of standardization of the format and the strength of…

The purpose, administration, organization, and clientele of People's Universities is described, as is their function in the Soviet educational and political systems. (AG)

The general hypotheses derived from a series of six experiments in instructional theory were as follows: that the individually optimal reading sequence of juxtaposed, but mutally related, prose text depends on learning goal and pre-knowledge; that adult learners are able to approach this reading sequence through their own decisions; and that…

This study is part of a project entitled "Organization, content and methods of adult education." It investigates (1) guidance for adults, which includes a look at theoretical and methodological contributions of vocational guidance and guidance at school, current practices and adaptation of guidance to the prospect of permanent education; (2)…