Overview document

A dvancing Innovation in Adult Education: An Overview

Adult education programs assist adult learners in developing their foundational knowledge and skills, earning secondary credentials, and transitioning to further education and employment. To enhance adult education programs’ capacity to support learners’ success, the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education (OCTAE) is funding a five-year project to identify and disseminate innovative practices in adult education that lead to improved learner outcomes.

As adult education state offices and local adult education programs implement activities under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), there is a need for information about products and processes for delivering services that can facilitate adult education learners’ development of knowledge and skills, attainment of a secondary credential or its equivalent, and transition to further education and employment. The Advancing Innovation in Adult Education project presents an opportunity to highlight innovative practice that reflect statutory requirements and administration priorities and support meaningful outcomes for participants.

Innovative adult education practices are new or significantly improved:

• products or services, such as a curriculum (product) or inclusion of career and

• college advising (service);

• processes for delivering adult education services, such as online learning; or

• ways of organizing adult education services, such as integrated education and training.

Adult education practices are instructional or supportive activities that facilitate learners’ knowledge and skill development, secondary credential attainment, postsecondary credential attainment, and/or employment. Examples of innovative approaches to delivering instruction include:

• Competency-based instruction

• Concurrent enrollment in adult education and credit-bearing postsecondary courses

• Integrated education and training (IET)

• Integrated English literacy and civics education (IELCE) in combination with IET

• Strategies for working with adults with learning disabilities or difficulties

• Use of learning in context

• Use of technology to increase access to, quality of, and amount of instruction

• Work-based learning

Application

Applicants should consider whether an adult education program may have an innovative practice. The Checklist for Innovative Practices, available on the Advancing Innovation webpage, has questions for consideration to help programs reflect on whether a practice meets the project’s definition of innovative practices.

The application will be made available on the project webpage.

The Advancing Innovation project team will work with applicants to learn more about how practices are carried out, including the key components of the practice and its outcomes for adult learners. The project team may conduct site visits to selected programs.

Contact Us

For more information, contact the project at [email protected] or visit the project webpage on LINCS at https://lincs.ed.gov/state-resources/federal-initiatives/advancing-innovation.

The Advancing Innovation in Adult Education project (Contract No. 91990018F0047) is executed by Manhattan Strategy Group and Abt Associates.