Adult literacy skills are critical assets of individuals as well as societies in terms of economic (e.g., human capital) and social well-being. Thus, it is important to monitor the long-term trends and sources of skill gain/loss. Yet, temporal sources of adult literacy skill variation are understudied. The current study analyzed three comparable, nationally representative datasets including the 1994 International Adult Literacy Survey; the 2003 International Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey; and the 2012/2014/2017 Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies.

Correspondence: yamataka@umbc.edu

Correspondence: lyn.tett@ed.ac.uk

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), one in five adults living in the United States has a mental illness (2022). The term “mental illness” accounts for a vast number of conditions, all of which differ in the level of impact on an individual. Furthermore, a study from NIMH (2022) estimates that only 43% of individuals with a mental illness receive treatment. With such a high frequency of adults knowingly and unknowingly being adversely impacted by mental health disorders, there is a strong likelihood that if you are an adult facilitator, you have students struggling with mental health.

Correspondence: Eccleston.Education@gmail.com

Limited literacy has a large impact on the U.S. population; about half of adults lack sufficient literacy proficiency (Rothwell, 2020). However, not all populations are impacted equally, as there is a significant comorbidity between low literacy and mental illness (Sentell & Shumway, 2003). Evidence suggests that patients suffering from a mental illness can experience reading difficulties in childhood (Maughan & Carroll, 2006), which in part contributes to the delays seen in adulthood. Low literacy not only makes educational attainment and completing daily tasks challenging but also is associated with poor health outcomes (including mental health) and is a recognized barrier to accessing health resources (Sentell & Shumway, 2003).

Correspondence: jtorous@bidmc.harvard.edu

In 2020 and 2021, 44% of adult learners identified as Hispanic/Latinx, 19% as Black/African American, 8% as Asian/Asian American, and 1% as American Indian or Alaska Native (National Reporting System for Adult Education [NRSA], 2021).Among this cohort of 2020-2021 adult learners, most were English language learners with low-literacy and/or cultural barriers. Almost 25% were economically challenged (NRSA, 2021). Trauma amongst these learners is also prevalent, with 44% of those participating in an adult basic education program reporting trauma (Miller-Roenigk et al., 2021). It is thus imperative for educators of adult learners to employ a multicultural approach that also accounts for traumas experienced by underserved populations due to racism, historical violence, discrimination, and immigration, among other experiences (Tummala-Narra, 2007).

Correspondence: maya.matalon@my.liu.edu or caroline.clauss-ehlers@liu.edu

As described by the editors of Resisting Neoliberalism in Education, the key goals of the collection are to share “resources of hope” and to identify “interstices for resistance - points where it is possible to intervene to disrupt the dominant neoliberal regime and to help emergent, more emancipatory, cultures to take root” (p. 253). As such, the volume is intended to not just diagnose the societal, economic, and educational ills created by neoliberalism, but to also highlight practices that point towards a more humane future.

Correspondence: jacobsone@mail.montclair.edu

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Resource Review

Review of Building and Growing Apprenticeship with Equity in Mind: An Equitable Apprenticeships Toolkit

Chrissie Klinger, LINCS Career Pathways and Postsecondary Transitions Group Moderator

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There is a deep gap between how health messages are communicated and how adults with lower literacy skills can understand them to make good health decisions. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted this gap with a plethora of accurate, complex, contradictory, and false information that was difficult for people at all literacy levels to understand; adults with lower literacy skills may not have both the general and health literacy skills to parse through confusing health information. ... Adults with low literacy may struggle to understand and use basic individual health and public health guidance; adult educators can play an important role in sharing trustworthy and easier to understand health information through curricular innovations in their classrooms.

Correspondence: ifeinberg2@gsu.edu

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SkillBlox is an initiative of the EdTech Center at World Education where its creator, Jeff Goumas, now works. In this column, I will briefly describe SkillBlox, what you will find there now, and what is planned. A skill block, according to Goumas, is a skill-based collection of activities that teachers create by finding, organizing, and adding aligned free and open education resources that can be shared with their students and shared with and then adapted by other teachers for their students.

Correspondence: djrosen@newsomeassociates.com