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Adult Abilities
A Study of University Extension Students
Herbert Sorenson
University of Minnesota Press, 1950
Adult Abilities: A Study of University Extension Students was first published in 1950. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.Adults learn much better than is commonly believed; this is the conclusion reached by Dr. Herbert Sorenson in a nation-wide study of many thousands of adult students in university extension classes. Dr. Sorenson conducted a personal investigation in the state universities of Virginia, California, Kentucky, Colorado, Utah, Indiana, and Minnesota, as well as numerous other schools throughout the country that offer courses for adults. His findings, incorporated in this volume, contribute a substantial body of new data on a subject about which too little has been known heretofore.
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Adult Literacy and American Identity
The Moonlight Schools and Americanization Programs
Samantha NeCamp
Southern Illinois University Press, 2014

The release of U.S. census data in 1910 sparked rhetoric declaring the nation had a literacy crisis and proclaiming illiterate citizens a threat to democratic life. While newspaper editors, industrialists, and officials in the federal government frequently placed the blame on newly arrived immigrants, a smaller but no less vocal group of rural educators and clubwomen highlighted the significant number of native-born illiterate adults in the Appalachian region. Author Samantha NeCamp looks at the educational response to these two distinct literacy narratives—the founding of the Moonlight Schools in eastern Kentucky, focused on native-born nonliterate adults, and the establishment of the Americanization movement, dedicated to the education of recent immigrants.

Drawing on personal correspondence, conference proceedings, textbooks, and speeches, NeCamp demonstrates how the Moonlight Schools and the Americanization movement competed for public attention, the interest of educators, and private and governmental funding, fueling a vibrant public debate about the definition of literacy. The very different pedagogical practices of the two movements—and how these practices were represented to the public—helped shape literacy education in the United States. Reading the Moonlight Schools and the Americanization movement in relation to one another, Adult Literacy and American Identity expands the history and theory of literacy and literacy education in the United States. This book will be of interest to scholars in literacy, Appalachian studies, and rhetoric and composition.

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Anay's Will to Learn
A Woman's Education in the Shadow of the Maquiladoras
By Elaine Hampton with Anay Palomeque de Carrillo
University of Texas Press, 2013

The opening of free trade agreements in the 1980s caused major economic changes in Mexico and the United States. These economic activities spawned dramatic social changes in Mexican society. One young Mexican woman, Anay Palomeque de Carrillo, rode the tumultuous wave of these economic activities from her rural home in tropical southern Mexico to the factories in the harsh desert lands of Ciudad Juárez during the early years of the city’s notorious violence.

During her years as an education professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, author Elaine Hampton researched Mexican education in border factory (maquiladora) communities. On one trip across the border into Ciudad Juárez, she met Anay, who became her guide in uncovering the complexities of a factory laborer’s experiences in these turbulent times.

Hampton here provides an exploration of education in an era of dramatic social and economic upheaval in rural and urban Mexico. This critical ethnographic case study presents Anay’s experiences in a series of narrative essays addressing the economic, social, and political context of her world. This young Mexican woman leads us through Ciudad Juárez in its most violent years, into women’s experiences in the factories, around family and religious commitments as well as personal illness, and on to her achievement of an education through perseverance and creativity.

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The College Fear Factor
How Students and Professors Misunderstand One Another
Rebecca D. Cox
Harvard University Press, 2011

They’re not the students strolling across the bucolic liberal arts campuses where their grandfathers played football. They are first-generation college students—children of immigrants and blue-collar workers—who know that their hopes for success hinge on a degree.

But college is expensive, unfamiliar, and intimidating. Inexperienced students expect tough classes and demanding, remote faculty. They may not know what an assignment means, what a score indicates, or that a single grade is not a definitive measure of ability. And they certainly don’t feel entitled to be there. They do not presume success, and if they have a problem, they don’t expect to receive help or even a second chance.

Rebecca D. Cox draws on five years of interviews and observations at community colleges. She shows how students and their instructors misunderstand and ultimately fail one another, despite good intentions. Most memorably, she describes how easily students can feel defeated—by their real-world responsibilities and by the demands of college—and come to conclude that they just don’t belong there after all.

Eye-opening even for experienced faculty and administrators, The College Fear Factor reveals how the traditional college culture can actually pose obstacles to students’ success, and suggests strategies for effectively explaining academic expectations.

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Doing Time, Writing Lives
Refiguring Literacy and Higher Education in Prison
Patrick W. Berry
Southern Illinois University Press, 2018
Winner, Coalition for Community Writing Outstanding Book Award 2019

Doing Time, Writing Lives
offers a much-needed analysis of the teaching of college writing in U.S. prisons, a racialized space that—despite housing more than 2 million people—remains nearly invisible to the general public. Through the examination of a college-in-prison program that promotes the belief that higher education in prison can reduce recidivism and improve life prospects for the incarcerated and their families, author Patrick W. Berry exposes not only incarcerated students’ hopes and dreams for their futures but also their anxieties about whether education will help them.
 
Combining case studies and interviews with the author’s own personal experience of teaching writing in prison, this book chronicles the attempts of incarcerated students to write themselves back into a society that has erased their lived histories. It challenges polarizing rhetoric often used to describe what literacy can and cannot deliver, suggesting more nuanced and ethical ways of understanding literacy and possibility in an age of mass incarceration.
 
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From Military to Academy
The Writing and Learning Transitions of Student-Veterans
Mark Blaauw-Hara
Utah State University Press, 2021
Grounded in case-study research, this book explores the writing and learning transitions of military veterans at the college level. Providing meaningful research into the ways adult learners bring their knowledge to the classroom, From Military to Academy offers new ways of thinking about pedagogy beyond the “traditional” college experience.
 
From Military to Academy is a detailed picture of how student-veterans may experience the shift to the college experience and academic writing. Grounding his research in the experiences of student-veterans at a community college, Blaauw-Hara integrates adult learning theory, threshold concepts, genre analysis, and student-veteran scholarship to help readers understand the challenges student-veterans experience and the strengths they bring as they enter the academic writing environment. Each chapter takes a different theoretical approach to frame student-veterans’ experiences, and Blaauw-Hara ends each chapter with specific, actionable pedagogical suggestions.
 
Composition studies scholars especially have demonstrated an ongoing interest in and commitment to understanding the experiences of student-veterans from military service to postsecondary education. From Military to Academy helps college writing faculty and writing program administrators understand and support the growing numbers of student-veterans who are making the transition to higher education.
 
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The Gates Unbarred
A History of University Extension at Harvard, 1910 - 2009
Michael Shinagel
Harvard University Press

The Gates Unbarred traces the evolution of University Extension at Harvard from the Lyceum movement in Boston to its creation by the newly appointed president A. Lawrence Lowell in 1910. For a century University Extension has provided community access to Harvard, including the opportunity for women and men to earn a degree.

In its storied history, University Extension played a pioneering role in American continuing higher education: initiating educational radio courses with Harvard professors in the late 1940s, followed by collegiate television courses for credit in the 1950s, and more recently Harvard College courses available online. In the 1960s a two-year curriculum was prepared for the U.S. nuclear navy (“Polaris University”), and in the early 1970s Extension responded to community needs by reaching out to Cambridge and Roxbury with special applied programs.

This history is not only about special programs but also about remarkable people, from the distinguished members of the Harvard faculty who taught evenings in Harvard Yard to the singular students who earned degrees, ranging from the youngest ALB at age eighteen, to the oldest ALB and ALM recipients, both aged eighty-nine—and both records at Harvard University.

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Grassroots Engagement and Social Justice through Cooperative Extension
Nia Imani Fields
Michigan State University Press, 2022
Grassroots Engagement and Social Justice through Cooperative Extension grows out of a commitment to the belief that Cooperative Extension professionals can and should be deeply engaged with the communities they work in to improve life—individually and collectively. Rooted in an understanding of the history and development of Extension, the authors focus on contemporary efforts to address systemic inequities. They offer an alternative to the “expert” model that would have Extension educators provide information detached from the difficult and sometimes contentious issues that shape community work. These essays highlight Extension’s role in and responsibility for culturally relevant community education that is rooted in democratic practices and social justice. The ultimate aim of this book is to offer a vision for the future of Extension as its practitioners continue to reach for cultural competence necessary to address issues of systemic injustice in the communities they serve and of which they are a part.
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The Para-Academic Handbook
A Toolkit for Making-Learning-Creating-Acting
Alex Wardrop
Intellect Books, 2014

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Preparing Adult English Learners to Read for College and the Workplace
Kirsten Schaetzel, Joy Kreeft Peyton, Rebeca Fernández
University of Michigan Press, 2024
The ability to read effectively—to work with a text, understand its meaning, and talk and write about it with and for others—is a critical aspect of academic and workplace success. However, many adults who are learning English as a second or additional language do not have the skills needed to be successful and may drop out of college and university programs before they reach their goal. Bringing together a rich collection of topics and authors, this edited volume provides theory, research, and instructional approaches to help adult education ESL practitioners work effectively with adult learners and prepare them to be successful with reading in academic and workplace settings. 

After reading this book, adult ESL practitioners will be able to
  • Prepare adults learning English to apply appropriate reading strategies to a variety of academic and professional contexts and purposes
  • Use instructional strategies, including digital technology, to help struggling and developing readers close gaps in skills and conceptual knowledge
  • Improve reading comprehension through robust vocabulary instruction
  • Enhance reading skills and comprehension through writing instruction that balances sentence-level, discourse, and interactive processes and practices
  • Inspire students to become lifelong readers who engage in extensive reading outside of school and professional contexts
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Theory and Practice
Bite-Sized Activities for Teaching Reading Skills
Aviva Katzenell
University of Michigan Press, 2023
Theory and Practice: Bite-Sized Activities for Teaching Reading Skills is an easily digestible guide that links key reading skills theory to practical activities that can be adapted for different classrooms. It dives into the physiological process of reading, the link between sounds and symbols, reading accomplishments at different levels, and the skills required for reading fluency. In addition, Theory and Practice discusses Color Vowel methodology and how it aids students in acquiring automaticity through pattern recognition and associating sound with color. Chapters contain activities for pre-reading, interactive reading, and post-reading as well as how to adapt these activities for different learning levels. Examples of real student work, images, vocabulary logs, and the annotations that accompany each activity demonstrate what teachers can expect for the outcome of each activity. Theory and Practice aims to provide practicing ESOL instructors, student teachers, and educators with the key theory and tools they need to help their classes boost L2 reading skills and cultural competency in English.
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Unlocking Learning
International Perspectives on Education in Prison
Edited by Justin McDevitt and Mneesha Gellman
Brandeis University Press, 2024
Contributors from many countries share their insights about effective educational programs for people in prison and show what the United States can learn from the models and struggles beyond its borders.
 
Countries around the world have disparate experiences with education in prison. For decades, the United States has been locked in a pattern of exceptionally high mass incarceration. Though education has proven to be an impactful intervention, its role and the level of support it receives vary widely. As a result, effective opportunities for incarcerated people to reroute their lives during and after incarceration remain diffuse and inefficient. This volume highlights unique contributions from the field of education in prison globally. In this volume, academics and practitioners highlight new approaches and interesting findings from carceral interventions across twelve countries. From a college degree-granting program in Mexico to educational best practices in Norway and Belgium that support successful reentry, innovations in education are being developed in prison spaces around the world. As contributors from many countries share their insights about providing effective educational programs to incarcerated people, the United States can learn from the models and struggles beyond its borders.
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