Author Description

This report is a detailed longitudinal study of the lives of adult learners. The aim of the project was to understand the connections that adults make between learning and their everyday lives. The research addresses questions about the significance of language, literacy and numeracy in the lives of adults who have difficulties, including their experiences of learning programmes. It explores the relationship between how people deal with difficulties and their classroom experiences. In the classroom the researchers looked at the links between teaching and learning, participation, motivation and persistence. A key goal was to identify teaching and learning strategies that are most effective in encouraging and supporting adult basic skills. Table of contents: * Executive summary * Section 1: The first year of the adult learners' lives project (summary of the first two years) * Section 2: The case study sites (Blackburn, Lancaster, Liverpool) * Section 3: Research reports and emerging themes from the three main sites (access, site reports, the overall database, data analysis on student needs and the E1 class, the individual learners and the focal classroom) * Section 4: The teacher-researcher programme (the process of setting up the programme, the projects, interim reports from the six teacher-researchers) * Section 5: Initial reports and review of research (a review of ethnography and literacy, theories of informal learning, retention and achievement, how learning is accomplished in adult literacy numeracy and ESOL educational settings) * Section 6: The broader context (themes from the research, methodological developments, the involvement of practitioners, the impact of the project, the workplace strand of the ALL project, immediate plans) * Appendices (demographic report, literacy and health, ESOL students in the prison system, accelerated experience in teaching basic skills, overall emerging themes and future issues, forms of impact of the Adult Learners' Lives proj