Leadership building is a viable vehicle for promoting adult learner empowerment. Furthermore, adult students as aides, tutors, mentors and community workers play an important role in many adult programs. There is a need to legitimize this group of workers, recognize and pay them.

In our concern for the professionalization of the field, we must take care to “grandfather” part-time experienced non-certified “teachers.” This entails providing a way for them to receive accreditation via a demonstration of “competence in action.”

In our pursuit of program accountability, we must validate qualitative research and longitudinal studies as viable instruments particularly appropriate for measuring adult learner outcomes.