Utilization of practices and principles of adult education is examined in two programs offered at one Canadian federal institution using a qualitative strategy (N=22 students, 4 teachers). Findings are presented in tables; differences between the needs of adult prison populations and the normative adult-education population are discussed. (EMK)

Describes the American Association of Community Colleges' first summit on workforce development. Presents key points from the summit, including: (1) the possible creation of a National Business Forum; (2) the marketing of community colleges as a major part of economic development in the nation; and (3) a more unified research agenda among and…

Provides information for teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL) about the emotional aspects of job loss and offers suggestions for helping students who have lost their jobs. The information was derived from workshops responding to the needs of unemployed ESL students and includes philosophical principles for working with the unemployed.…

Interviews an authority on antiracist education in Canada. The article presents issues for consideration by English-as-a-Second-Language teachers preparing displaced workers facing racism in employment. Issues raised include the types of racial barriers existing in the Ontario job market and the "modus operandi" and pervasiveness of…

Addresses ways in which issues bearing on unemployment can be broached in the English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classroom. The article maintains that ESL courses should help their students develop language skills to cope with the service bureaucracies and advocate for beneficial changes. (four references) (Author/CK)

Analyzes changes in oral communication skills of five American adult learners who participated in a five-week study abroad program in Spanish. Subjective analysis of recordings of participants upon their return show that four participants increased their command of the vocabulary and were more at ease in discourse interaction. (14 references)…

Interviews with African-American adult students at four universities and four community colleges showed that past and current collegiate experiences and personal supports create congruence or lack of congruence between students and college cultures. Fragile and intermittent involvement, limited learning engagement, and cultural dissonance were…

Argues that community colleges give less attention to noncredit courses and programs, those that are designed to assist in some sort of job training or those that simply enrich a student's knowledge. Sees this credit-based value system as highlighting the discrepancy between what community colleges offer and what students, especially older ones,…

While college composition theory/pedagogy courses are standard offerings in composition and rhetoric graduate programs, specialized basic writing graduate courses lag behind. At the same time, there is a pressing need for highly qualified teachers of nontraditional adult students, especially in community college and adult literacy education…

This article draws on a larger study of the dynamics of work and study among adult students in public higher education institutions in South Africa. This study found that over 50% of all students in the higher education system in the country are over 23 years of age, and 80% of them are at undergraduate level. The focus of this particular article…

Contextual studies of learning experiences as recalled by working, adult learners entering post-graduate studies in higher education are not widely reported in higher education research. The purpose of this study was to explore the recalled learning experiences of adult students with work experience, but no prior completed academic qualifications,…

How do children and adults learn to use computers? What developmental processes are involved in learning to use computers? This chapter reviews current understanding of these issues and presents empirical studies demonstrating how to advance that understanding. (Contains 2 figures.)

What are the aspirations of Adult ESOL learners and what social and institutional factors constrain them? What are the consequent implications for Adult ESOL practitioners? This paper draws on a corpus of 76 interviews with adult migrants learning English in the UK, analyzing four of them in detail using a case study methodology. Despite the high…

The article describes a research project undertaken with advanced adult learners of German at a distance at The Open University, United Kingdom. Their gains in intercultural competence were investigated by looking at how far the students met the prescribed learning outcomes, their knowledge items, language skills, attitudes towards Germans and…

Understanding the mechanisms learners use to process target language input is crucial to developing a complete model of both first language (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition. If adult L2 learners are found to process the target language with mechanisms that differ from those used by child L1 learners and adult native speakers, what…