About the Project
Adult education programs strive to provide effective literacy instruction for adults seeking their services. A growing convergence of research findings reveal how to improve instruction with children and adolescents. We propose to extend the knowledge garnered from these younger populations to addressing adults' needs. Our goal is to validate instructional interventions appropriate for adults with limited literacy proficiency
Our proposal offers a multi-disciplinary, systematic, and programmatic research plan with three aims. First, we are investigating what reading component skills are incorporated within common assessments of literacy (CASAS, NAEP, GED). This knowledge aids in the design of effective adult interventions and provides necessary information to explicate an intervention model linking the relationship of reading components and existing interventions to global adult literacy outcomes. Our group has extensive success improving child and youth literacy and, more recently, in adult literacy in educational settings. We are adapting our interventions to the adult learner and adults' instructional settings.
Second, we have selected appropriate interventions based on our Aim 1 findings and are rigorously testing these interventions with adults under well-controlled conditions. We are specifically interested in enhancing performance on the component reading skills of word analysis, fluency, and reading comprehension. We predict that these skills will be closely related to gains on adult literacy measures.
Our final aim addresses the significant issue of successfully translating research findings into practice in conventional adult education settings. More specifically, these studies examine how effective interventions are on learners' outcomes when the research controls and supports are reduced.
Copyright © 2007 Division of Adult Studies - Center for Research on
Learning
Last Updated: January 08, 2007
