If an individual is in an adult education classroom, something likely prevented them from successfully completing their education the first time around. Many adult students must overcome deep negative feelings about a failed education to even seek services from an adult literacy program.
Leaders of adult literacy programs must understand the psychological impacts on adult learners from past hardships in order to create environments that promote learning and improve student retention. In our new issue of Adult Literacy Education: The International Journal of Literacy, Language, and Numeracy, we share new research about measuring and understanding psychological stress in adult learners as well as how using a multimodal play approach in adult education can help positively frame learning for students with past trauma.
“This is a subject that has great implications for student success, but for so long has not gotten the attention it deserves.”
“It’s very important to us that we publish needed research about topics like the psychology of adult learners when they arrive at adult literacy programs,” said ProLiteracy President and CEO Mark Vineis. “This is a subject that has great implications for student success, but for so long has not gotten the attention it deserves. Every adult educator can benefit from the research in this issue.”
In addition to our research articles, this issue includes a sub-focus on teaching reading. We have included a Report from the Field documenting an instructor’s career-long journey learning to effectively teach reading and the key research she found most valuable. In our Forum this issue, we include contributions of experts debating how to improve services for adults learning to read.
To publish Adult Literacy Education, we partner with Rutgers University. The journal editors—Alisa Belzer, Amy Rose, and Heather Brown—are leading researchers in the adult literacy and education field who believe in the importance of research to complement practitioners’ experiences, intuition, and professional learning.
In the research journal, adult literacy practitioners, researchers, funders, and policymakers can find evidence-based information to guide their practice, prompt important discussions, and build awareness.
We publish the free online journal three times per year to share the latest and best research and practices in adult literacy, numeracy, and English language education. Each article in Adult Literacy Education goes through a blind peer-review process to ensure we are publishing the highest quality information that the field can trust and use. By keeping our research free, we ensure that the important information shared in the journal will benefit all adult learners equally.
Writers interested in submitting articles for consideration in future issues of the journal can find author guidelines and a submission form on the journal’s webpage.