The Adult Basic Education Teacher's Toolkit

Glossary of Terms

You will find that educators use educational terms in many different ways. The following terms can help you understand how terms have been used in this manual.

anecdotal	Containing anecdotes, which are short narratives of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident.
approaches	Approaches describe a general philosophy or paradigm from which an instructional model is developed. An example might be holistic versus behavioristic approaches to teaching and learning. See entries for holistic and behavioristic.
behavioristic	Behavioristic approaches to learning focus on the outcome behaviors as separate skills that have been mastered.
branching	Branching is a technique for organizing ideas in which the student writes the topic in the middle of the page and then connects ideas to this topic.
dyslexia	A learning disability characterized by confusion when reading printed text, thus making it difficult to successfully develop reading skills.
holistic	Holistic approaches to learning look at the combination of all effects of learning - attitudinal changes, skills mastered, changes in self-confidence, and all other results of a learning experience.
manipulatives	Learning aids that students can touch, feel, hold. An example would be to measure the top of a classroom table to learn the concept of length, width, area, and so forth.
metacognition	Metacognition is the act of being aware of one's own thought processes.
methods	Methods are ways of organizing people for learning - as individuals, as small groups, or as total groups.
model	To model is to show by example.
paradigm	An especially clear example; a standard.
paraphrase	To restate or explain in your own words the text from a passage or work of poetry or prose.
personal dictionary	A notebook for writing and keeping new words and their definitions as they are encountered in any reading activity or situation.
portfolios	Collections of students' own work which they keep. Teachers can collect portfolios to assess and evaluation them. Grades should not be assigned to portfolios because they are more "works in progress."
skills	Skills are learner outcomes - the abilities of learners that can be observed.
techniques (strategies)	Techniques or strategies refer to ways of organizing the interaction of learners and curriculum content. Examples include - language experience stories, free writing, story mapping, and so forth.
Web and cluster	Use Use Webs and clusters for organizing thoughts. A Web has a center, the main idea, with outlying topics and subtopics. A cluster is like a cluster of grapes with the stem, the main idea, and the grapes, the topics and subtopics.

Note: The International Reading Association is compiling an annotated glossary of adult education terms. This glossary will be included with a future revision of The Adult Basic Education Toolkit.

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