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Retention and Motivation

Retention

Student and Tutor Retention: Dozens of links for improving your recruitment and retention strategies! This site connects you to the Literacy Support Center's page for retention of Adult Students which provides over 30 links for student retention. It also connects you to websites which address the retention of tutors and other volunteers.

Adult Student Persistence: Resources for Policy Makers: This links you to a list of articles and research reports for increasing student persistence from the Connecting Practice, Policy & Research section of the NCSALL website.

Recruitment & Retention of Students for Literacy Programs: Retention At a Glance - This site sponsored by the National Center for Family Literacy provides you with some clear and concise strategies for increasing student retention.

Adult Student Persistence: NCSALL Study Circle Guide: A comprehensive exploration of adult student persistence offering you many strategies and resources for your classroom! This guide includes articles, resources, and action research reports to help practitioners consider strategies for increasing adult student persistence. "The guide is based on a review of the NCSALL research on adult student persistence conducted by John Comings and others, summarized in an article entitled "Supporting the Persistence of Adult Basic Education Students" and other studies on student motivation and retention. This guide provides all the necessary materials and clear instructions to plan and facilitate a three-session study circle with an option for a fourth. Each session lasts three-and-a-half hours."

Ideas to Improve Student Persistence: Need some fresh ideas to improve your students' persistence/retention? These ideas and suggestions come from OTAN and summarize a California adult learners' "rap session."

Learner Retention: Tons of resources! This site sponsored by the Literacy Training Networks identifies common characteristics in programs with high student retention rates and have collected over 30 best practice Word documents that these high retention classes use.

Ideas to Encourage Student Retention: Here are some practical ideas for you to use - over 60 specific ideas and strategies for increasing student retention from Jefferson Community College, Kentucky.

A Summary of Suggested Strategies for Improving Learner Persistence: Tons of concrete strategies for motivating your students and improving student persistence! During the 2004-2005 fiscal year, California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project (CALPRO) sponsored study circles (composed of adult literacy instructors) across the state focusing on the issue of learner persistence. Later they met with the leaders of the study circles to identify techniques found to improve learner persistence. This document summarizes their findings. You may need to register with OTAN to receive this document. There is no cost. Registration simply allows you access to 1000s of resources provided by OTAN. (This is a pdf document. If you don't have Adobe, you can download it by clicking here.)

Why Do They Leave?: Check out this link from Canada. It offers a summary of a major literacy study from Canada. For good reflective questions for your practice, scroll to the last page.

Youth Cultural Competence: A Pathways for Achieving Outcomes with Youth: This Focus on Basics article discusses strategies for retention of the youth in your ABE/GED program.

Practice Application Brief: Recruitment and Retention (This is a pdf document.  If you don't have adobe, you can download it by clicking here.) This article is provided by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career and Vocational Education.

Improving Retention in Adult Basic Education and Recommended Strategies for Effective Instructional and Counseling Interventions: This article by Allan Quigley summarizes a recent study of retention.  "The objective of this study was to generate specific recommendations for more effective counseling and teaching intervention strategies, based on the acquisition of new knowledge concerning motivational constructs among resistant Adult Basic Education (ABE) student dropouts. This would assist ABE programs in dealing with student resistance."

A Case for Computer-based Multimedia in Adult Literacy Classrooms : This article reviews the potential benefits (including increasing learning retention) of using computer-based multimedia technology with adult literacy learners in relation to their profile and needs.

Student and Tutor Retention: This links you to the Literacy Support Center's page for retention of Adult Students.

Adult Student Persistence: Resources for Policy Makers - This links you to an article from the Connecting Practice, Policy & Research section of the NCSALL website.

Motivating Adults

Principles of Adult Learning - This research brief was prepared by Stephen Lieb, a part-time adult literacy instructor at South Mountain Community College in Arizona. "Part of being an effective instructor involves understanding how adults learn best. Compared to children and teens, adults have special needs and requirements as learners. Despite the apparent truth, adult learning is a relatively new area of study. The field of adult learning was pioneered by Malcom Knowles." This article explores Knowles' characteristics of adult learners.

How to Motivate Adult Learners -  This link is provided by About: Adult/Continuing Education.  It provides practical tips, suggested readings and links to related articles and topics.

Focus on Basics: Influences of the Reading Practices of Adults in ABE - This articles is published by the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy. "What do adult literacy learners do, intentionally or unintentionally, outside of class to improve their reading and writing? And what seem to be important influences on these actions? We followed adult literacy learners Edna, Juan, and Margaret for a brief period, using observation and interviews to take "snap shots" of their out-of-school literacy activities and efforts. We learned that teachers, access to materials, and perceptions about the importance of reading practice play a role in what they knew to do and actually did to improve their literacy skills outside of class. This article describes these findings and identifies their implications for practice"