Helping Adult Learners Make the Transition to Postsecondary Education
This resource contains both evidence-based research and practice-based materials that can help guide the development, implementation, and continuous improvement of career pathways programs.
This report discusses the challenges ABE programs must address in developing and implementing transition services, provides examples of promising practices, and discusses the implications of this transformation for policy and practice.Transition assistance discussed in this report includes providing additional instruction to enhance learners’ academic skills, offering counseling for financial aid, stress and time management, and study skills, to providing mentors who offer encouragement and support. The report reports that the use of these strategies must become much more widespread if we are to see a substantial increase in the number of ABE learners who participate in postsecondary education. The report calls on state and federal leadership to promote the enhanced curriculum, new services, and collaborative relationships necessary for effective transition programs.
The purpose of this resource is to allow instructors to identify ABE program shortcomings in helping prepare adult learners to transition successfully to post-secondary education and to identify practices that will improve the transition success.
This resource was reviewed and vetted through the Designing Instruction for Career Pathways initiative of the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education under Contract No. ED-CFO-10-A-0072/0001.