The Mississippi Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (MIBEST) program provides pathways into college for adult education students across the state. This brief serves as a supplement to the Urban Institute's original evaluation of MIBEST (Briggs et al. 2022) with an analysis of two factors not explored in the original MIBEST report: the…

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to explore the complexities and connections between women, femme, and nonbinary (WFN) collective social entrepreneurs, social movement learning (SML), and critical participatory action research (CPAR) within the fields of adult education (AE) and human resource development (HRD). WFN collective social…

In this essay, I argue that our recent pivot toward digital learning, in addition to the social discontent and economic turbulence exacerbated by the pandemic, requires a re-imagining of how we "do" adult and workforce education (AWE) policy. First, I briefly describe the 2014 Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act (WIOA) policy.…

While the educational system attempts to recover from the last few years of teacher attrition and lower enrollments in teacher education programs, there is an opportunity within adult education to both promote and mentor indigenous women in educational leadership roles by providing education, resources, and opportunities during their training. As…

At a time with an increasing focus on return on investment, employers must adopt business strategies that are scalable; driven by their own data; and inclusive of students and workers of all ages, experiences, and backgrounds. Talent Pipeline Management® (TPM) is a workforce strategy that focuses on the development and delivery of talent from…

This report argues that the education and skills individuals possess have become increasingly important to their overall quality of life. As technology and automation continue to alter the workplace and the nature of work, the ability of individuals to acquire and augment their skills will remain a key challenge. Changes in the nature of work over…

To be prepared for the work of today and tomorrow, more than just the right skills are needed. There needs to be an infrastructure that supports continuous and transformative learning throughout a lifetime. This market scan takes a deep dive into the complex and evolving alternative education and training market, focusing on high-quality solutions…

This evaluation report presents the findings from the project-level evaluation of the CareerTech Challenge, delivered between May 2020 and June 2021. The report examines how the design and delivery of evaluations were undertaken, the findings across process and outcome evaluations and key learning from capacity building support delivered by…

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 United States is experiencing dramatic shifts in the skills required of incumbent workers and new hires. While the recent low unemployment rate was generally good news, it also exacerbated a persistent skill shortage in the region's labor force that has been consistently reported by many employers. A McKinsey Global Survey indicates that…

Organizations advocating for federal, state, and local level support for adult education have long relied on the power of individual story to influence both public perception and public policy. They have developed training programs, provided advocacy toolkits, and organized visits with policy makers in order to promote and sustain awareness of the…

Dr. Jacobson's analysis of "hard to serve" is well founded, especially from an academic and theoretical perspective, yet the author is left wanting. Is the solution to merely change the language, the terminology of the legislation, or the terminology used by policy makers as well as practitioners? Are these adults hard to serve or ill…

John Dewey's educational philosophy provides a compelling resource for empowering adult vocational education through a cultural vision, ultimately rooted in a view of social democracy as the creative task of lifelong learning before us. This is supported by Dewey's interpretation of knowledge construction in its varied cognitive, ethical, and…

One in every six adults in the United States is an immigrant. These immigrant adults contribute to the vitality of local communities and economies across the country, but many also face barriers to integration and economic mobility, including limited English proficiency, varied levels of formal education, and persistent employment in low-wage…

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…