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Focus On Basics

Volume 1, Issue C ::: September 1997

Welcome to Focus on Basics

Dear Readers,

In this issue we address the question of multilevel classes. Endemic to the field of adult basic education, some teachers thrive on the multilevelness' of their classes, others struggle with it. Writers from around the country share their perspectives, hoping to give you insight valuable to your daily work.

It is with this issue that our editorial board of two teachers, an administrator and teacher, a staff developer, a researcher, and a writer admitted that Focus on Basics grapples with the issue of a multilevel readership. You are teachers, administrators, counselors, policymakers, staff developers, and researchers. You are new and experienced, have recently switched from adult basic education to English for Speakers of Other Languages or vice versa. Some of you teach math, others reading and writing, some use technology, some don't. Some work in one-on-one programs, others in settings that use classroom-based instruction. Some see this field as your career, others make adult basic education a second career, or volunteer as part of your community involvement. You work in public school buildings, in prisons and community corrections centers, in workplaces, in community based organizations, in community colleges, and in churches. The learners you serve are as varied as your settings - young, old, in between, born in the U.S. and in every other country in the world. As we craft articles, we hope to be as relevant as possible to as many of you as possible, knowing that we can't meet all our your needs but hoping to challenge you and, in the process, to relish your diversity.

One of Focus on Basics' goals is to help you become more critical consumers of research. Towards this end, in this issue we launch Focus on Research. Via this column, we hope to bring to life the work of the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL) by discussing not just research findings and their implications, but work in progress. Each issue, we'll highlight a different project, sharing what it takes to conceive of and initiate a research study, what thorny decisions researchers make as they go along, and what NCSALL, and the field of adult learning and literacy, hope to learn from the effort. Click on Focus on Research to see an overview of NCSALL's longitudinal study of adult literacy learners, directed by Steve Reder, Associate Professor of Psychology at Portland State University.

Sincerely,

Barbara Garner
Editor

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