The data and information gathered in this study provides credible and current input to help the field of adult education increase the effective use of technology to reach more adult learners. The recommendations that resulted from this study promise to create more collaborative efforts to fill the technology gaps that currently challenge programs and to promote the development of content that specifically addresses adults, especially through mobile devices. This national survey of adult basic skills practitioners' access to and use of technology is unique. For adult educators, the greatest value may be as a platform to engage their students and colleagues in discussions about access to and use of technology for education purposes. The survey can stimulate valuable discussion, as is evidence by the LINCS community of practice discussion featuring the resource's lead author. Teachers could administer a modified version of this survey in their classrooms to open up a discussion of technology with learners. Several of the graphs may be useful for teachers to share with their students (e.g. Benefits of Technology in Education, Estimated Smartphone Ownership Among Adult Education Students).

How Poverty and Cognitive Biases Can Impact Decisions provides adult educators with tools for handling the frustrating, self-undermining behaviors and counterintuitive decision-making frequently seen among their students. With the greater emphasis on workforce preparation under WIOA, this paper provides practical, immediate advice to instructors who know that simply teaching resume writing and interviewing preparation will not change the underlying behaviors that sabotage student success. Administrators and classroom practitioners could use this resource to design action plans for classroom and counseling use. This publication starts the conversation about prevalent and pervasive internal barriers to success experienced by adult education students and provides strategies for overcoming them. These internal barriers may be more significant and pervasive than external barriers such as transportation and childcare. This particular publication examines poverty, but there are other conditions that may also influence mindset, self-identity, and self-efficacy leading to consistently less than desirable choices and decision-making. It also provides recommendations for workforce development practitioners to reduce conditions of economic scarcity that impact their clients’ choices and actions. No attempt was made to tie the research cited to adult learning theories. Granted, little descriptive or experimental research has been with adult learners and the importance of positive self-identity and perception to motivation is undeniable.

Adult educators will find this article interesting and, perhaps, be surprised that so many adults are not already sensitive to the requirements of a simple number line (equal spaces between all consecutive numbers). This concept is particularly important in work settings that assume workers’ ability to use measuring devices accurately. The resource clearly describes a task that can be immediately used with learners for formative assessment and also provides samples of student work that can be studied and analyzed by teacher study groups and/or groups of learners in a classroom setting. It will be useful to new and experienced adult educators both for its description of problems in adult students understanding of part/whole concepts as well as for giving instructors a very useful tool for quick, easy, and inexpensive assessment of those concepts. The author also suggests reasons for why students lack these concepts including brains that were not physically ready for processing this information due to young age, toxic stress in childhood (e.g., poverty, emotional and physical abuse) and developmental disabilities or traumatic brain injuries. While the information is nothing new to experienced adult education instructors, the author provides a way to see specific results of childhood stress in a way that will ring true to community college instructors in workplace development programs as well as adult basic education classes. The author asks the reader to check his or her assumptions about learning, to modify their teaching, and always to be aware of the building blocks leading to mathematical understanding.