Narratives drawn from a Fulbright study of immigrant women in Chile communicating with their families at-a-distance through information and communication technologies show that they utilized digital visual literacy practices. Digital visual literacy is a combination of digital literacy and visual literacy and even goes beyond these conceptualizations. By manipulating their levels of visibility through platforms on smartphone devices, immigrant women strove to create a sense of co-presence with their families abroad. This paper demonstrates the complexity and relevance of combining visuality with multi-literacies, voice, and gendered narratives of digital communication for immigrants inside and outside of adult literacy classrooms.

Correspondence: cubans@wwu.edu

The evolving neurobiological and psychological understanding of emotions, specifically positive emotions, provides fascinating insights into how learners’ emotions can be evoked, and online learning environments can be crafted to maximize student engagement. Engaged online learners are more active, self-directed, and responsible; they persist and find academic success at higher rates. This article aims to maximize learner outcomes by combining the research and frameworks of online student engagement with the neuroscience and psychology of positive emotions. 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.

Correspondence: ellen.beattie@centerforintentionallearning.com

When I began my career in adult education as an adjunct ESL teacher, I felt well-equipped with an understanding of second language acquisition and evidence-based teaching methods. At the time, I knew nothing about digital literacy. Once I began to understand its importance and the challenges that it posed in the classroom, I developed the Digital Literacy Action Plan, an instructional strategy designed to differentiate, increase learner agency, and address digital equity concerns. This article is written for adult basic education instructors who aim to integrate digital literacy skills into their instruction in a way that is meaningful to each learner and empowers learners to acquire digital skills autonomously.

Correspondence: mrsrachelriggs@gmail.com

Adult literacy has been on the margins of postsecondary education for so long that many in our field assume our ongoing struggle for adequate funding and a better image is somehow "normal." It is not normal that some 107,000,000 adults across North America are marginalized, with many hidden in society due to low literacy. This article argues it is time to reconsider the position of our field concerning funding and image beginning with a new conversation concerning literacy classism—the "elephant in the room."

Correspondance: jen_vanek@worlded.org

In the disorienting early days of the pandemic, educators and learners in adult literacy, basic education and English Language Learning programs accomplished a rapid shift to “crisis remote teaching” to accommodate physical distancing mandates and lockdowns. The flurry of studies...

Correspondance: suzanne_smythe@sfu.ca

Much like adult learners, adult educators enter the classroom with diverse educational, professional, and lived experiences—and varying levels of familiarity with digital tools and technology. But in the hours following the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent shutdown, educators across the nation were suddenly tasked with teaching online. For the most part, educators in adult literacy, academic, and ESOL programs...

Correspondance: scacicio@digitalpromise.org

Hill makes a compelling reason for adult educators to consider this book – she reports there have been no new textbooks on assessment, evaluation, and accountability specific to the field of adult education in the last decade. While that is true, evaluation, accountability and assessment is usually required of all adult educators, in the course of their day-to-day operations, whether it be teaching, management, administration, training or...

Correspondence: daffros@wwu.edu

Two words stand out in the title of Betsy Parrish’s second edition of this important volume: practical and introduction. In fact, practical is really an understatement for this accessible, useful, and relevant update to Parrish’s original 2004 book. Teaching Adult English Language Learners provides research- and practice-based guidance, recommendations, and examples...

Correspondence: syoung@american.edu

Over the last two decades, digital gaming has become one of the most popular forms of entertainment, with worldwide revenue surpassing sales of TV, movies, and music (Reuters, 2018). Players of digital games span all age groups and backgrounds, partly due to the popularity of “casual” gaming on smartphones and tablets. Gaming has become a hub for social interaction...

Correspondence: elisabeth.gee@asu.edu

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Each Technology Solutions for Adult Basic Skills Challenges column begins with a common challenge facing adult basic skills practitioners. Solutions offered for these challenges, at least in part through the use of technology, include hardware, software applications such as websites, course management systems, learning management systems, and apps for mobile devices. Each article begins with a description of the challenge, and then examines solutions that involve the use of technology.

Correspondence: djrosen@newsomeassociates.com