Adult Education: What Makes Teaching Effective?
This brief provides an overview of research on effective teaching that can be applied in multiple settings by a broad range of teachers across adult education programs who share a commitment to reigniting and nurturing students’ lifelong love of learning and preparing them for postsecondary and career success.
This brief provides an overview of research on effective teaching that can be applied in multiple settings by a broad range of teachers across diverse settings. Adult education in California takes place in environments including school districts, community colleges, community-based organizations, libraries, and correctional facilities, and serves students with skills that range from basic literacy to international professional training. Across contexts, research finds that effective teaching is enriched by:
- thoughtful attention to student backgrounds,
- collecting and using student data to inform the implementation of evidence-based practices including (1) learner-centered instruction, (2) rich and contextualized content knowledge, (3) use of standards to inform learning objectives, and (4) attention to foundational skills and higher-order thinking, and planning for professional development that targets specific teacher competencies
This brief is for adult foundational education teachers who are interested in formal professional development, or more informal professional learning, to enable them to become a more effective teacher.
- It is a great introduction to teacher effectiveness.
- It would be a great document to include in a professional development course or study circle, or for teachers who are eager to understand on their own what an effective adult foundational education teacher needs to know and be able to do.
- It could potentially be used throughout a continuum of instructional professional learning activities from discussion of evidence-based instructional practices and creating awareness and focus for teachers to teacher collaborations charged to seek more information on a specific area(s) for improvement (e.g., study circles, research, job assignments, etc.) to facilitating projects collectively focusing on process improvements involving one or more of the instructional areas.
This eight-page CALPRO Brief, designed for California adult educators, is relevant to new and more experienced teachers in the field of Adult Foundational Education anywhere in the U.S. (also known as Adult Literacy, Adult Basic Education, Adult Education and Literacy, or ESL/ESOL). It describes a broad California adult foundational instruction context that has a wide range of paid and volunteer teachers in a broad range of adult foundational education programs across the state; this description also accurately mirrors the range across the U.S.
Throughout the brief it balances evidence-based research approaches with a set of values that recognizes the importance of learning about students as individuals, and meeting their needs as they understand them.
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