A Public Health Approach to Improving the Lives of Adult Learners: Introduction to the Special Issue on Adult Literacy Interventions

Abstract Addressing the literacy needs of adult basic and secondary education learners must form a core part of a broader public health effort to increase educational and health outcomes for these individuals and their families. Adult learners constitute a significant proportion of the overall adult U.S. population and a proportion that impacts, directly and indirectly, on the physical and economic health of millions of families and society writ large. Enhancing the literacy skills of low-literate adults has proven difficult, hampered by the relative dearth of research data on struggling adult learners and effective intervention approaches, the contextual challenges of delivering intensive interventions, limited personal and systemic resources, and competing demands on learners’ time. We propose a systems-level view of adult low literacy as one that holds promise and provides a basic framework for providing coordinated, comprehensive, and integrated services but that requires additional research to support. Informed and coordinated efforts with the prekindergarten to 12th-grade education system and health and labor services sectors is needed if we are to improve the lives of these adults and their families.

[1]  John Kruidenier,et al.  Research-Based Principles for Adult Basic Education Reading Instruction. , 2002 .

[2]  D. Makuc,et al.  Health, United States, 2009; with special feature on medical technology , 2010 .

[3]  E. Waters,et al.  Interventions for preventing obesity in children. , 2001, The Cochrane database of systematic reviews.

[4]  Daniel A. Wagner.  The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy: New Technologies for Adult Literacy and International Development , 2009 .

[5]  J. Blaak.  Chapter Six. Literacy In Everyday Life , 2009 .

[6]  Donald D. Deshler,et al.  Teaching Adolescents With Disabilities:: Accessing The General Education Curriculum , 2005 .

[7]  Stephen Krashen,et al.  The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research , 2004 .

[8]  S. Daniels,et al.  Complications of obesity in children and adolescents , 2009, International Journal of Obesity.

[9]  M. Wolf,et al.  Retrieval, Automaticity, Vocabulary Elaboration, Orthography (RAVE-O) , 2000, Journal of learning disabilities.

[10]  D. Deshler,et al.  The Effects of Instruction in an Inference Strategy on the Reading Comprehension Skills of Adolescents with Disabilities , 2007 .

[11]  Eric M. Dunleavy,et al.  Literacy in Everyday Life: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy. NCES 2007-490. , 2007 .

[12]  Judith A. Alamprese,et al.  Effects of a Structured Decoding Curriculum on Adult Literacy Learners’ Reading Development , 2011, Journal of research on educational effectiveness.

[13]  Literacy and Health in America , 2004 .

[14]  Jebediah J. Northern,et al.  A meta-analysis of family-behavioral weight-loss treatments for children. , 2007, Clinical psychology review.

[15]  Daphne Greenberg,et al.  The Challenges Facing Adult Literacy Programs. , 2008 .

[16]  S. Merriam,et al.  Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide , 1991 .

[17]  E. Polloway,et al.  Corrective Reading Program , 1986 .

[18]  Steven Holtzman,et al.  Relative Effectiveness of Reading Intervention Programs for Adults With Low Literacy , 2011, Journal of research on educational effectiveness.

[19]  Mary V. Alfred.  Learning for Economic Self-Sufficiency: Constructing Pedagogies of Hope among Low-Income, Low-Literate Adults. Adult Education Special Topics: Theory, Research and Practice in LifeLong Learning. , 2010 .

[20]  Laura D. Fredrick,et al.  A Randomized Control Study of Instructional Approaches for Struggling Adult Readers , 2011, Journal of research on educational effectiveness.

[21]  Elizabeth Greenberg,et al.  A First Look at the Literacy of America's Adults in the 21st Century. NCES 2006-470. , 2006 .

[22]  D. Langenberg.  Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction , 2000 .

[23]  Donald D. Deshler,et al.  Validation of Learning Strategy Interventions for Students with Learning Disabilities: Results of a Programmatic Research Effort , 1992 .

[24]  Donald D. Deshler,et al.  The Use and Effectiveness of a Comparison Routine in Diverse Secondary Content Classrooms. , 2002 .

[25]  K. Taylor,et al.  CRTC3 links catecholamine signalling to energy balance , 2010, Nature.

[26]  Thomas A Glass,et al.  Transforming research strategies for understanding and preventing obesity. , 2008, JAMA.

[27]  Lisa M. Baumgartner,et al.  Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide, 3rd Edition. , 2006 .

[28]  Brett Miller,et al.  Advances and Remaining Challenges in Adult Literacy Research , 2010, Journal of learning disabilities.

[29]  D. Brooks,et al.  The Relation of High School Biology Courses & Students' Religious Beliefs to College Students' Knowledge of Evolution , 2011 .

[30]  M. Story,et al.  A Journey Just Started: Renewing Efforts to Address Childhood Obesity , 2010, Obesity.

[31]  Mark A. Kutner,et al.  The Health Literacy of America's Adults: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy. NCES 2006-483. , 2006 .

[32]  H. Braun,et al.  America's Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing Our Nation's Future. , 2007 .

[33]  T. Byers,et al.  Do obese children become obese adults? A review of the literature. , 1993, Preventive medicine.

[34]  Mark A. Kutner,et al.  The Health Literacy of American Adults:Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy. , 2006 .

[35]  S. Cunnane,et al.  Survival of the fattest: fat babies were the key to evolution of the large human brain. , 2003, Comparative biochemistry and physiology. Part A, Molecular & integrative physiology.

[36]  John A. H. Lee.  Health: United States , 1986 .

[37]  Judy Thorne,et al.  Profiles of the Adult Education Target Population. Information from the 1990 Census. , 1993 .

[38]  John M. Dirkx,et al.  Completion and Attrition in Adult Basic Education: A Test of Two Pragmatic Prediction Models , 1994 .

[39]  Rosemary S. Caffarella,et al.  Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide, 3rd ed. (San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons/Jossey-Bass, 2007 , 2011 .

[40]  D. Deshler,et al.  Embedded Learning Strategy Instruction: Story-Structure Pedagogy in Heterogeneous Secondary Literature Classes , 2007 .

[41]  K. Flegal,et al.  Prevalence of high body mass index in US children and adolescents, 2007-2008. , 2010, JAMA.

[42]  M. Kogan,et al.  Racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and behavioral determinants of childhood and adolescent obesity in the United States: analyzing independent and joint associations. , 2008, Annals of epidemiology.