The Adult Literacy and Adult Education SIG (ALAE) is dedicated to research, development, policy, and practice in adult literacy and adult education. The group takes an interdisciplinary, lifespan perspective on learning and instruction among diverse populations. 
 

JOIN OUR SIG

The Adult Literacy and Adult Education (ALAE) SIG is one of the few places in AERA to connect with researchers working with adult populations. We also offer opportunities to be a part of the community of adult education researchers, to meet people who work with or have connections to institutions that fund research, hire adult education researchers, and publish adult education manuscripts. We are always growing our vibrant scholarly community. Please invite your colleagues and graduate students to join our SIG. If you are not already an AERA member, go to the website.  Be sure to select the ALAE membership ($10). If you are already an AERA member, you can update your existing membership online through the AERA site and by selecting our Special Interest Group as one of your SIGs (note: we are ALAE SIG #4).

Hello everyone,

Welcome to another year of connection through the AERA Adult Literacy and Adult Education SIG! I’m looking forward to serving as the chair of the SIG for the next two years. In this email I’d like to share an introduction to new officers for the SIG, a call out for volunteer reviewers for this year’s submissions, info about a Proliteracy special issue, and encouragement to submit proposals to AERA 2027.

Intro ALAE SIG Officers 2026

Amy Pickard, Chair - Please email me (pickard@iu.edu) if you have announcements to send out (jobs, calls for proposals or submissions) or general questions about the SIG

Elizabeth Tighe, Program Chair  - Please email Liz (etighe@gsu.edu) if you have questions about submissions to, reviewing for, or chairing a session in this year’s conference

Leah Saal, Treasurer/Secretary - Please email Leah (lksaal@loyola.edu) if you have questions about membership or dues 

Lindsay McHolme, SIG Awards Char - Please email Lindsay (lmcholme@nmu.edu) if you have questions about SIG awards

Welcome and thanks to new officers! SIG Members, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any questions.
Amy

Reviewers Needed Liz asked me to share that we are in need of additional reviewers for this year’s conference. If you are interested in reviewing but have not yet indicated your interest, please reach out to Liz directly (etighe@gse.edu). We are also in need of volunteer chairs/discussants.

Meet the ALAE Leadership Team:

Amy Pickard is the ALAE SIG Chair. Amy is an Assistant Professor of Adult Education at Indiana University Bloomington. She is a qualitative researcher whose interests center on policy, equity and adult literacy education. As a former adult literacy and ABE teacher, she is interested in supporting adult learners to define their own learning needs and improving policy and programs to better meet these needs. She is particularly interested in systems-level understandings of ABE, reading and writing instruction in ABE spaces, self-directed learning of ABE students, and digital engagement of ABE teachers and adult learners.

Elizabeth L. Tighe is the Program Chair and is looking forward to an exciting 2027 Annual Meeting. Liz is a Professor of Psychology and the Assistant Director of the Adult Literacy Research Center at Georgia State University (GSU). Her research focuses on the literacy skills and instructional needs of struggling adult readers. She has published and presented work on individual differences in adults’ component reading skills, assessment and measurement of reading constructs, classification of learning disabilities, and using educational technology in adult literacy classrooms.  Her work has been funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, National Institutes of Health, and AERA. She has also tutored in multiple adult literacy classrooms in Florida and Massachusetts and has also taught high school equivalency courses in Arizona.

Leah Katherine Saal is the Secretary/Treasurer. Leah is a professor of literacy at Loyola University Maryland, School of Education. Passionate about lifelong learning, she has over 20 years of experience designing, teaching, researching, and evaluating educational and training programs for adolescents and adults with and without disabilities in schools and organizations.

Lindsay McHolme is the chair of the ALAE Awards Committee. Lindsay is an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Georgia State University’s (GSU) Adult Literacy Research Center (ALRC). Her community-engaged research focuses on multilingual education in adult and secondary spaces. She holds a professional teaching certificate in secondary English Language Arts with a certification in ESOL and has taught ABE and ELL adult learners in multiple settings in Michigan, high school EFL at a Spanish/English bilingual school in Honduras, and middle school ELA at a Spanish/English bilingual school in Michigan. She was also the director of a county-wide literacy coalition for all ages for several years, emphasizing the impact of community-engaged scholarship. 

Amber Rosamond is the Graduate Student Liaison. Amber will be working to find ways to connect graduate students to the SIG and she will also manage a LinkedIn page for us.

Margaret Patterson is the Website Manager. Margaret is a Senior Researcher with Research Allies for Lifelong Learning in Virginia (www.researchallies.org). She has served in an ALAE SIG officer role for more than a decade and looks forward to keeping you informed about the latest SIG happenings.

  

Ascendium announces new grants

Ascendium has approved over $58 million in grants to enhance postsecondary education and workforce training for learners from low-income backgrounds. The funding supports community college workforce initiatives, strengthens institutional capacities, backs high-quality sectoral training programs, promotes evidence-based practices, and expands postsecondary education in prison. These investments target the removal of structural barriers and fostering of equitable opportunities for student success.

An exciting Message from IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement):

Are you interested in large-scale assessments?

 Some words about the ILSA Gateway: It is an open-access platform that, for the first time, provides researchers a single entry point to major international large-scale assessments in education conducted by the following organizations: CONFEMEN (PASEC), the IDB (PRIDI), the IEA (ICCS, ICILS, PIRLS, TEDS-M, and TIMSS), IEA/UNESCO (REDS), the OECD (IELS, PIAAC, PISA, TALIS, and TALIS Starting Strong), SACMEQ (SACMEQ III, SACMEQ IV), SEAMEO/UNICEF (SEA-PLM), UNESCO (TERCE), and the World Bank (STEP). 

For each study, users can navigate to a fact sheet that provides a quick overview; read more detailed information on the study framework, design, results, and data pages; and easily access the related resources on the external study websites. The platform also features a glossary, search tool, and paper database, of which the latter allows researchers to identify relevant articles published to date in peer-reviewed journals, including secondary analyses of the above-mentioned study data.

The website is available at https://ilsa-gateway.org/. 

Download the ILSA Gateway brochure on:

https://ilsa-gateway.org/sites/default/files/ILSA_Gateway_Flyer.pdf