The United States has been the global leader resettling refugees since the 1970s; its resettlement program is the largest in the world. The state of Texas has a high number of admissions and longstanding refugee programs which makes it a strategic site for research. This article reports findings of a reflective case study within an open enrollment…

This practice-based case study explores how digital education practices within an inclusive, supportive environment can help to transform the practice and meet the specific needs of adult literacy education practitioners in their specific contexts. In an effort to contribute to discourse in relation to what works in various programmes and…

The authors describe how a community museum created and curated by adult education students acted as an innovative and student-centered model to support learners in developing and demonstrating their literacy skills and knowledges. Using a case study approach to document and analyze students' counterstories (i.e., stories that disrupt dominant…

This paper argues that part-time adult literacy facilitators (ALFs), who are often employed in large numbers, have the potential to become agents for a wider approach to development, especially through involvement with the adult learning targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Drawing on international ethnographic-style research into…

Linguistic diversity characterizes many countries with large literacy needs. Meeting these needs will require a multilingual approach based on learning initial literacy in the learner's mother tongue, with other languages used subsequently. This article identifies five major challenges in implementing multilingual programmes and traces the…

The purpose of this study was to understand the literacy practices of individuals in Africa and the Americas who had between one and seven years of schooling. The questions investigated included: "In what literacy practices do adults with limited or no schooling engage for personal fulfillment? and (2) What do these practices reveal about the…

In Canada, various studies investigating literacy learning have contributed to our understanding of the lives of the adult student. Through a consolidation of empirical evidence, a portrait of the adult learner is sketched, drawing upon pluralistic interpretations of the important life changes that have resulted from their participation in…

Teachers/facilitators in adult literacy learning programmes are recognised as being vital to successful learning outcomes. But little is known about them as a group. This small-scale research project comprising ethnographic-style case studies of five adult literacy facilitators (ALFs) in Ethiopia seeks to throw some light on these teachers, their…

This article reports on a study of adult literacy and learning in a public computing center where people contend with the new literacy demands of online government and other automated technologies. The study asks, (1) What literacy and learning practices are associated with digital governance? (2) What pedagogies support people to navigate digital…

We evaluated neuro-functional changes associated with late acquisition of reading in an illiterate adult who underwent 20 longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans during 2 years, while the participant progressed from complete illiteracy to a modest level of alphabetical decoding. Initially, the participant did not activate…

Research supports the premise that adult language and literacy instruction should build on prior linguistic knowledge and the lived experiences of the students. Despite these widely held tenets, classroom practices often do not reflect these ideals, instead providing learning opportunities that are decontextualized and isolated from the students'…

This article explores whether looking at adult literacy teaching through the lens of Lave and Wenger's "community of practice" approach to learning provides useful additional insights into adults learning to read, especially the role of the adult literacy facilitator. Using some case studies of facilitators from the Ethiopian Integrated…

The impact of participation in adult literacy programmes on learners' identities is examined through an interrogation of their past and current experiences and the assessment of the effect of particular pedagogies. The findings show how learners' positive experiences in their programmes had caused them to re-evaluate their previous understandings…

The case studies presented in this Support Document are a compilation of learnings derived from the research project, "Enhancing training advantage for remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners." The project, funded by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER), was conducted by a consortium of researchers…

This article reports on one teacher's journey, Nan's, as she struggled to provide appropriate instruction to low-literate day laborers in an English as a second language (ESL) class for adult learners. In her efforts to do so, Nan became inspired to implement alternative pedagogy based on a culturally responsive approach that resonated strongly…