Each year in the United States, hundreds of thousands of people enroll in adult basic education (ABE) classes but leave before completing a level or accomplishing their goals. The persistence of this phenomenon may indicate that it is a feature of the system, rather than an unforeseen outcome. Research on other types of social service provision…

Social science research often uses educational qualification as a signifier for characteristics such as abilities, earnings potential, and civic participation in adulthood. This study focused on two types of adult literacy students who were native speakers of English and identified words at the 3rd to 5th grade levels but differed in one key…

The "Focus on Basics" serial concerns adult Learning and literacy. The eight short articles in this theme issue are all devoted to the topic of "learner motivation": (1) "Power, Literacy, and Motivation" (Greg Hart); (2) "The First Three Weeks: A Critical Time for Motivation" (B. Allan Quigley); (3) "Build Motivation by Building Learner…

This paper is a description of a union-sponsored workplace literacy program conducted in a large metropolitan hospital. The section following the introduction presents the research methodology, including data collection and data analysis procedures. The section entitled "The Making of a Workplace Literacy Program" looks at the planning stages of…

A study of the Philadelphia Lutheran Settlement House's Women's Program was conducted to determine what methods and practices the program uses to maintain a high retention rate (75 percent) of students in its adult basic education (ABE) classes and what else can be done to retain students more effectively. Data were gathered from two basic…

The following papers are included: "Schoolhouse in the Factory: The Phenomenology of Literacy" (Berlin); "The Self-Directed Learning Projects of Employed, Married Mothers" (Boyce); "The Forever Plan: Adult Men Who Continue in Postsecondary Education Compared with Those Who Drop Out" (Brown); "Burnout and Associated Factors among…

The growing number of youth enrolling in adult literacy education is a little-documented trend across the nation that is having a major impact on programs in some areas but appears to be unnoticed by educational policymakers and researchers. A central question is whether youth enrollments provide an opportunity for adult literacy education to…

This booklet contains profiles of nine outstanding adult learners from eight Pennsylvania counties who have been recognized for their educational achievements and for acknowledging the power of education in their lives and overcoming great personal difficulties to improve and enhance the quality of their lives and those of their families and…

This set of four newsletters contains articles to help adult basic education and literacy teachers connect research and practice. The following are among the articles included: "The Effects of Continuing Goal-Setting on Persistence in a Math Classroom" (Pamela Meader); "Do the Cognitive Skills of Dropouts Matter in the Labor…