"This book advances a framework, a process and meaningful approaches for assessing and evaluating adult learning in career and technical education (CTE"--Provided by publisher.

Continuous advances in technologies, individuals, and the workplace have increased the importance of adult learning and professional development for keeping up with the current pace of technologies and information. Advanced Research in Adult Learning and Professional Development: Tools, Trends, and Methodologies explores the understanding, practice, and research within technical education and professional development. By providing a comprehensive view on educational technologies for adult learning, this book is essential for lecturers, practitioners, as well as academics interested in a variety of research in continuing education.

In the United States, the nomenclature of adult education includes adult literacy, adult secondary education, and English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) services provided to undereducated and limited English proficient adults. Those receiving adult education services have diverse reasons for seeking additional education. With the passage of the WIA, the assessment of adult education students became mandatory-regardless of their reasons for seeking services. The law does allow the states and local programs flexibility in selecting the most appropriate assessment for the student. The purpose of the NRC's workshop was to explore issues related to efforts to measure learning gains in adult basic education programs, with a focus on performance-based assessments.

Evaluation for Continuing Education provides the useful and practical tools necessary to ensure a successful program evaluation. The book presents systematic guidelines aimed at enhancing understanding of evaluation concepts and procedures, and offers manageable ways to selectively include evaluation activities as an integral part of program planning, implementation, and justification. Author Alan Knox reveals that the key to successful evaluations that improve education programs for adults is a basic rationale for why and how. He helps readers select and develop their own rationale throughout the course of the book while suggesting fundamental evaluation concepts and procedures. He shows how to distinguish some program aspect upon which a specific evaluation project will focus-including needs assessment, goals and policies, staffing assessment, materials development, and more-and summarizes examples of evaluation reports that reflect the various types of providers and scales on which evaluations are conducted. Knox offers a particularly wide variety of these examples, enabling readers to reflect on implications for their own evaluations and fashion unique guidelines and procedures that fit their own situations.