An adult educator in Butler, Pennsylvania, noticed that, although students who took the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) seemed highly motivated to improve their basic skills in mathematics and spatial relations, only 2 of her 20 students who took the GATB made a concerted effort to develop their vocabulary. Thinking that those two students…

This research project was conducted to identify the reasons for the low retention rate for adult students enrolled in the prep level of the General Educational Development (GED) programs offered by the Clinton County (Pennsylvania) Development Center for Adults. All adult students who attended class at least once from July 1998 through January…

Many volunteer literacy tutors in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, have not completed their 1-year tutoring commitment. Consequently, an action research project was undertaken to determine the causes of the high tutor turnover and to identify ways of improving the tutor retention rate. All tutors involved in the program from 1998 onward were asked…

The Southwestern Pennsylvania Area Labor-Management Committee (SPALMC), which serves approximately 180 adult students annually, was experiencing inconsistencies in performance among its adult education staff. The problems included teachers arriving late 50% of the time and individualizing instruction only 70% of the time. To remedy these problems,…

The Pennsylvania Adult Literacy Practitioner Inquiry Network (PALPIN) project was conducted to establish statewide and regional inquiry groups to help adult literacy practitioners improve their performance by raising and investigating issues meaningful to their day-to-day practice. The conceptual framework underlying Philadelphia's Adult Literacy…

For seven years, the Test of Adult Basic Education (TABE) was the primary standardized assessment instrument used by the adult education program of the Midwestern Intermediate Unit IV (MIUIV) of the Pennsylvania Department of Education Bureau of Adult Basic and Literacy Education. While reviewing its current assessment procedures, the MIUIV's…

Issues surrounding teaching competencies in family literacy programs were examined in a study of two well-established Even Start sites in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The program, which served 34 ethnically diverse adult learners, offered 25 hours of adult basic education, general educational development (GED), and…

Because an English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teacher in Pennsylvania observed from the intake questionnaires completed by her students that many ESL students lack short- and long-term goal-setting skills, she undertook an action research project to help ESL students develop the short- and long-term goal-setting skills needed for educational,…