Used strategically, libraries have the potential to play a key role in promoting national literacy efforts, as they are trusted by people in the communities they serve and are in a good position to provide a wide variety of literacy opportunities. Libraries provide literacy resources for children, youth and adults at all proficiency levels,…

Adult literacy provision began in Australia during a radical education era in the 1970s, and yet in recent decades, social class as a construct has been largely absent in the academic literature on adult literacy. We argue however that social class is essential to understanding adult literacy provision and furthermore that working class people…

This paper explores the role of fairy tales in relation to literacy, affective learning, self-authoring and narrative quest. The study examines fairy tales in the context of the New Literacy Studies with regard to improving cognitive, linguistic and creative writing skills for adult literacy learners.

Volunteer tutors play a significant role in delivering adult literacy programs. It is estimated that up to 60% of all instructors in adult literacy programs in the United States are volunteers (Ziegler, McCallum, & Bell, 2009). However, volunteer tutors' work or experience are rarely the subjects of research. Volunteer tutors' contributions to…

Adult education has a rich history in Iowa of providing services that assist adults in improving their skills, achieving their educational goals, and transitioning to further education or employment. Instruction is designed for adults functioning at the lowest levels of basic skills and/or needing English language instruction to advance their…

Participation in adult education and training (AET) programs is increasingly important for people of all ages and is necessary to remain competitive in a world experiencing rapid technological advances. Lifelong learning activities are especially important for middle-aged and older adults who intend to work at older ages to ensure they have the…

A common goal of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) is to provide learning environments that adapt to the varying abilities and characteristics of users. This type of adaptivity is possible only if the ITS has information that characterizes the learning behaviors of its users and can adjust its pedagogy accordingly. This study investigated an…

New Zealand has expanded its refugee resettlement programme. Government policy changes, announced in 2018, meant the refugee quota which has been 750 for about 30 years would increase to 1500 people (Immigration New Zealand, Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment, New Zealand immigration. Immigration Factsheets: Refugees and Asylum…

The purpose of this study was to examine how African American grandmothers caring for their grandchildren promoted literacy for themselves and for the children in their care. A descriptive-qualitative approach to collecting and analyzing data was deemed most appropriate for addressing the study questions. In-depth interviews were held with eight…

This article describes the experiences of three research teachers working for an adult literacy research and development center (csal.gsu.edu). This paper provides an overview of the program content delivered in the research adult literacy classes, shares experiences teaching this program, describes the learners' responses to the program, and…

We employed self-paced reading and event-related potential measures to investigate how adults of varying literacy levels use sentence context information when reading. Community-dwelling participants read strongly and weakly constraining sentences that ended with expected or unexpected target words. Skilled readers showed N400s that were graded by…

In the 2012 PIAAC Survey of Adult Skills of 23 industrialised countries, the UK (England & NI) scored below average on adult numeracy. Several recommendations focus on the need for (some) individuals in the population to undergo training. Yet, even in "high-performing countries" like the Netherlands, many adults (1.5M) score at or…

We employed self-paced reading and event-related potential measures to investigate how adults of varying literacy levels use sentence context information when reading. Community-dwelling participants read strongly and weakly constraining sentences that ended with expected or unex- pected target words. Skilled readers showed N400s that were graded…

Since it was signed into law, the Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act (WIOA) has been the subject of continuing scrutiny. One commonly shared concern is that the evaluation metrics of the Act (e.g., employment, salary, etc.) may incentivize programs to work with learners who will more readily meet expected outcomes (Pickard, 2016). Others…

Reading comprehension is often assessed by having students read passages and administering a test that assesses their understanding of the text. Shorter assessments may fail to give a full picture of comprehension ability while more thorough ones can be time consuming and costly. This study used data from a conversational intelligent tutoring…