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Focus On Basics

Volume 5, Issue B ::: October 2001

Adult Development


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Adult Development


Findings From the Adult Development Research Study 

Adult development has much to offer adult educators: it provides one more window through which we can understand learners and therefore better meet their needs. The NCSALL Adult Development Research Group study examined how the developmental levels of learners shape their experiences in their literacy programs. The research team views adult development as an interactive process between the individual and the environment, with adults moving from simpler to more complex ways of understanding the world. Concrete acts shape and organize the world of Instrumental adults; Socializing adults understand the world in relation to other persons or ideas; while Self-Authoring adults prioritize and integrate competing values according to their own ideology. Click here for an overview of the research; separate articles on each of three findings follow with Three Developmentally Different Types of Learners, Three Different Types of Change, and The Power of a Cohort and of Collaborative Groups. Click here for an article about two teachers whose learners participated in the study talk about their experiences. -Editor

 

Updated 7/27/07 :: Copyright © 2005 NCSALL