Illiteracy among adults is a chronic condition in the United States and elsewhere. Considerable resources have been expended to improve this condition. In the United States, the public schools through their adult education divisions have attempted to make a contribution to this effort. Impeding this effort has been their inability to create and use methods that result in attracting illiterate adults in sufficient numbers to attend their programs. / This dissertation describes a project designed to increase the number of illiterate adults enrolled in the adult basic education (ABE) program in a community school in Tallahassee, Florida. The project made use of a method for designing effective plans of action (POA) developed by Ingham and Hanks (1978), for changing existing states of affairs into preferred states. / Through Ingham and Hanks' (1978) Method of Designing Action Systems (MODAS), a plan of action (POA(,1)) was developed to increase the number of enrollments in ABE, at Godby High School, Tallahassee, Florida. / POA(,1) incorporated a series of actions which operationalized three variables or means concepts: (1) personalized recruitment, (2) significant others' influence, and (3) parenthood. / As a result of partial implementation of POA(,1) and some complementary activity by the practitioner, enrollments of Eligible adults in ABE rose from an average of 3.4 per quarter for the five previous quarters, to 30 for the Winter quarter of 1980, (i.e., a 882% increase). / Process evaluation procedures included interviews with the personnel and the Eligible adults. Time series analysis and the nonequivalent comparison group procedure served as a basis for designing product evaluation. / A revised plan of action (POA(,2)) was introduced to incorporate new data generated by process and product evaluation. A fourth means concept, structural requirements, was added to the explanatory system. / Finally, a critique of MODAS based on the experience gained from its implementation resulted in a revised design method. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 43-02, Section: A, page: 0339. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1982.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74755 |
| Contributors | GAUDET, CLAUDE., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 167 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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