Despite widescale literacy interventions, reading difficulties persist in the adult population. Results from international surveys report that millions of adults around the world remain unable to read the texts they require for daily life and work. Adult reading difficulties are diverse and under-researched, and adult-reading teachers are…

The focus of the Technology Solutions for Adult Basic Skills Challenges column begins with common challenges facing adult basic skills practitioners, expressed, for example, in the LINCS Integrating Technology group for which I am the moderator, in other LINCS groups, in my national and state conference or webinar presentations, or privately in…

Employment is foundational to young people's successful transition into adulthood, yet many youth with lived experience in the foster care system struggle to obtain employment that provides a living wage. Youth with foster care experience typically do not have the same contacts and connections to employment opportunities as youth who have not been…

Stuttering is a disorder that affects about 1% of the population and manifests as speech disfluencies. Reading difficulties and disabilities are commonly found in this population. Nonetheless, speech disfluencies have not been explored in adult struggling readers (ASRs). In the current study, we examined the rate of stuttering in ASRs as well as…

This policy brief is produced by UEA UNESCO Chair in Adult Literacy and Learning for Social Transformation at Bahir Dar University, as part of impact activities for "Family Literacy, Indigenous Learning and Sustainable Development: Proof of Concept Pilot" Project. This work was supported by University of East Anglia's Global Research…

In the most recent assessment by the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), approximately 19% of adults in the United States scored at or below Level 1 in literacy (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2019a). Adults who performed at Level 1 were only able to identify one key piece of information from…

This research sought to investigate the effects of instructional materials used at community resource centers on adult literacy learners in community development activities with a specific focus on Nyamira North Sub-County, Kenya. The study was guided by the constructivism theory of learning. It employed the descriptive survey design where a…

During the past two decades, an increasing number of European countries have introduced language requirements for residency, citizenship, and sometimes even for entry to the country and family reunification. As a result, democratic rights as well as basic human rights have come to depend upon an individual's ability to obtain a certain score on a…

Access to lifelong learning opportunities has long been discussed in terms of the economic benefits conferred by access to and engagement in further education by members of the labor force, particularly within the global knowledge economy. However, equitable access to lifelong education opportunities, particularly for low-skilled adults in the…

Fanfiction is a valid form of literacy expression often overlooked in academic settings. This study used a mixed-methods approach to understand the facets of fanfiction reading and writing in adults. Survey data was first collected to understand who are the adults choosing to read and write fanfiction. Based on survey results, individual cases…

This research was motivated by some multicultural classroom students' reactions to practicing writing argumentative text including the fact that Indonesia's adult literacy rate of 95% is not accompanied by the ability to recognize and adopt composed facts, which on average is very little. This research was formerly aimed to depict how…

Background: A significant portion of adults struggle to read at a basic level. Word reading (defined here as decoding and word recognition) appears to play a pivotal role for this population of readers; however, less is known about how word reading relates to other important semantic processes (e.g., vocabulary, sentence processing) known to…

Childhood education affects how individuals adapt to the challenges of adulthood. Although various generalizations are made relating childhood educational experiences to characteristics of adults, there is scant evidence to support those assertions for adult literacy learners in the United States. This study investigates the relationship of…

Adult basic education's role, from the beginning, has been about serving people with foundational skill needs. The author, Judy Mortrude, agrees with the argument that adult literacy education needs to be repositioned within a new framework of lifelong and life-wide learning, a framework in which new policies are formulated, programs are designed…

The concepts of adult literacy and adult education have been predominantly framed by the discourse of development in Nepal whereby literacy programmes are designed to combat illiteracy with the purpose of promoting the socio-economic and human development in the country. In this effort, certain groups of women and ethnic minorities have been…