Toward Defining and Improving Quality in Adult Basic Education: Issues and ChallengesAlisa Belzer This volume revisits, problematizes, and expands the meaning of quality in the context of adult basic education. Covering a wide range of relevant topics, it includes contributors from the realms of both policy and practice and encompasses both the major instructional areas-reading, writing, and mathematics-as well as larger issues of literacy, learning, and adulthood. Each chapter focuses on what improving quality in the field might look like through the particular lens of the author's work. As a whole, the broad scope of topics and ideas addressed will raise the level of discussion, knowledge, and practice regarding quality in adult basic education. In this book, the term adult basic education refers to the broad range of services for adults who wish to improve their literacy and language skills, including beginning and intermediate writing, writing and numeracy, preGED, GED/Adult Secondary Education, and ESL instruction that takes place in a range of contexts including schools, community-based programs, and workplace development programs. The volume is organized around three themes: *Accountability, Standards, and the Use of Documentation and Research; *Program Structures and Instruction; and *Rethinking Our Assumptions and Concepts. Coming at a time of increasing pressure to standardize, to be accountable, and to improve outcomes, and when calls for evidence-based practice are fueling stakeholders' interest in the relationship between research and practice at all levels of the system, Toward Defining and Improving Quality in Adult Basic Education is particularly timely for scholars, graduate students, and professionals in the field of adult basic education. |
Contents
Equipped | |
The Struggles and Challenges of Conducting | |
Professional Development and EvidenceBased Practice in Adult | |
Quality Instruction in Adult Literacy Education | |
Critical Factors in Providing Quality | |
Connecting Curriculum Development | |
Reconceptualizing Adult Basic Education and the Digital Divide | |
Services for Immigrants and Refugees | |
Mary Jane Schmitt and Martha Merson | |
Stephen Reder | |
Intersections with Role and Context | |
Literacy Identity and Development in Work School | |
Supporting the Persistence of Adult Basic Education Students | |
Learning to read as a Cultural Process | |
Why adult educators should care about writing | |
Other editions - View all
Toward Defining and Improving Quality in Adult Basic Education Alisa Belzer No preview available - 2007 |
Toward Defining and Improving Quality in Adult Basic Education: Issues and ... Alisa Belzer No preview available - 2012 |
Common terms and phrases
ABE programs accountability system activities adult and family adult basic education adult education adult ESL Adult Learning adult literacy education adult literacy programs adult students affinity groups algebra approach Askov assessment basic skills Beder challenge classes classroom context critical literacies critical pedagogy cultural curriculum defined digital literacies effective English English language example family literacy programs federal focus focused funding gender goals identities immigrants implement important improve individuals instruction interactive literacy issues learners Learning and Literacy learning to read literacy learning math mathematics measures Microsoft Game Studios outcomes participation performance persistence phonological awareness population practitioners professional development proficiency program quality refugees role self-study semiotic staff standards strategies Study of Adult teachers teaching texts U.S. Department understanding video gaming Washington Workforce Investment Act writing