Many service-providers, particularly teachers and administrators who are directly responsible for adult basic education programs, have received little or no training in adult education techniques. Often, their lack of awareness of the development and learning principles related specifically to adults and of how best to apply these in a wide variety of situations means that their efforts and good intentions miss the mark and the learner is not helped and often hindered.

C.C.L.O.W. will support and encourage the development of training opportunities for teachers and administrators in adult basic education programs.

The attitudes of adult basic education learners and potential learners about themselves and learning, and the attitudes of some service-providers about adult basic education learners and the services they require, are often mutually reinforcing and negative.

C.C.L.O.W. will work toward increasing the awareness of those who provide adult basic education services to women about the attitudes and organizational structures and processes which create barriers to undereducated women wishing to enter such programs.

There are two critical stages to the successful learning experience for a woman. These are: (a) the point at which the women is seeking information about and admission to a learning program and the educational institution is reaching out to make its programs accessible to that woman; and (b) the point at which the woman enters the learning program itself as a fully registered learner. The first requires an interface between the woman and the personnel, structures and practices of the educational administration. It involves the outreach functions of the institution and the effectiveness of the functions will affect both accessibility and barriers to learning opportunities. The second requires an interface between the woman, the teacher and other students, and between the woman and her perceptions of herself as a functioning person in the world in general and in the learning situation in particular. It involves the support functions of the institution and the effectiveness of these functions will affect the success or failure of individual women.

C.C.L.O.W. will support and encourage educational institutions to develop better outreach and support functions for women in adult basic education services.

C.C.L.O.W. will develop and make recommendations to specific educational institutions about the barriers created by their outreach services for undereducated women and about deficiencies in the support functions provided in conjunction with adult basic education programs.