"Two important pieces of legislation, the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 2004), have had huge impacts on the way that we educate students with special needs in the United States. Combining the intent of this legislation with ideas that originated in architectural design, adult educators have the potential to change the experience of adult learners of all educational abilities. By making a paradigm shift to embracing Universal Design for Learning, adult educators can increase learning outcomes for all students." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The adult literacy education field draws on research from several disciplines to support the work of educating the 40-44 million U.S. adults who lack the skills to obtain and maintain family sustaining work opportunities (Kirsch et al., 1993). Adult literacy research that documents the prevalence of low literacy in the adult population is useful for increasing awareness, for advocacy, and for educating funders and community partners about the need for, and impact of, adult literacy education. Research from adult and K-12 education are useful for improving professional practice and implementing effective program initiatives and for developing new knowledge about effective instructional strategies, evolving learner needs, and improving learner outcomes. In adult literacy education, efforts are made to use research for each of these purposes at the national, program, and individual levels. This paper documents how Seeds of Literacy, an adult literacy program in Cleveland, Ohio, uses education research to support its work. [For Part 1 of the series, see EJ1353257.]"

"This research suggests that positive psychology interventions, which have been consistently correlated to positive organizational outcomes when similarly used in business initiatives, also apply to the online adult literacy classroom. The infusion of practical positive psychology principles and the purposeful use of positive emotions in the online setting are presented from three distinct perspectives: creating a positive culture, facilitation, and academic content."

"The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) defines literacy as "the ability to understand, evaluate, use and engage with written texts to participate in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential.'" & "PIAAC is a large-scale international study of working-age adults (ages 16-65) that assesses adult skills in three domains (literacy, numeracy, and digital problem solving) and collects information on adults' education, work experience, and other background characteristics. In the United States, when the study was conducted in 2011-12 and 2013-14, respondents were first asked questions about their background, with an option to be interviewed in English or Spanish, followed by a skills assessment in English..."

"Some individuals with dyslexia demonstrate deficits in reading, visual attention, and visual processing which can be attributed to a functional failure of the magnocells in the visual system or in the dorsal visual pathway. The study examines the role of magno/dorsal function in dyslexic adults compared with normal, illiterate, and semi-literate readers. Coherent motion and coherent form were used in Experiment 1, and the frequency doubling illusion and static-gratings were used in Experiment 2. If a magno/dorsal deficit is demonstrated for dyslexic readers but not illiterate, semi-literate, and normal reading adults, then the deficit cannot be attributed to reading experience. Illiterate adults performed the same as normal and semi-literate readers in coherent motion and frequency doubling tasks, and all three groups performed better than the dyslexic readers. There was no difference between any of the groups in the coherent form or static grating tasks. Together, these studies show that illiterate and semi-literate adults do not demonstrate a magno/dorsal deficit that is a characteristic of some sufferers of dyslexia. Therefore, magno/dorsal deficits in dyslexia are unlikely to be a consequence of failing to learn to read but rather provides evidence to suggest a causal role for reduced visual magno/dorsal processing." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]