Our mission is to link theory and practice through interdisciplinary research, professional development and community partnerships to understand the challenges and opportunities for adults with low literacy skills.
Adult Education Program Fact Sheet
The National Association of State Directors of Adult Education (NASDAE) has a new website where you can select a U.S. state (or the entire U.S.) and find facts about the adult education population as well as enrollment and performance of adult education sites. Click here to access the facts sheet for Georgia»
Recent News
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Faculty Corner

Liz Tighe, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in developmental psychology whose work focuses on the literacy needs of struggling adult readers. She has been at Georgia State for five years. She currently has several funded projects from the NIH and IES.
For example, she is studying how struggling adult readers interact with digital literacy and numeracy items on the PIAAC (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies). She is also using PIAAC data on low-skilled readers both within and outside of the prison population to understand how reading components, reading behaviors and demographics influence literacy performance.
Tighe is also working on developing a battery of morphological awareness assessments that are valid to use with struggling adult readers.
The ALRC’s mission overlaps with Tighe’s goals of increasing opportunities for literacy development in adult learners. She mentors masters and doctoral students and engages them in her research, and really enjoys developing their independence and confidence in running statistical analyses. Her students are involved in all aspects-data collection, data analyses, literature reviews, brainstorming about problems to be solved and manuscript writing and presenting.
In her spare time, Tighe enjoys playing tennis, running, traveling, watching Florida State football and hanging with her cat, Anova.
ADULT LITERACY
With one in six adults reading at elementary levels, many adults have difficulty with daily tasks that involve reading, numeracy and problem solving1.
Adult literacy difficulties are pervasive and require a multi-pronged approach to addressing low adult literacy skills in our country. Our research focus is broad and includes both programmatic interventions and more general areas of adult literacy.
Our website offers resources and information about our research in this area.
The U.S. PIAAC Skills Map is a new interactive mapping tool that allows users to access estimates of adult literacy and numeracy proficiency in all U.S. states and counties. These estimates are based on data collected in the three rounds of U.S. PIAAC data collection (in 2012, 2014 and 2017) as well as data from the American Community Survey (2013-2017). Please view this page to find important state and county literacy level estimate.
FOLLOW US
Nursing Students ‘Teach Back’ to Promote Health Literacy
Staffed by medical professionals who volunteer their time, and organized by members of Snellville’s Grace Fellowship Church, Grace Village Medical Clinic is now one of the newest clinical sites for nursing students from Georgia State University’s Perimeter College. Read more about this project »
ALRC Research Support Grants Program
In FY2019, the ALRC awarded three grants to student affiliates. Read more about their projects »
OUR PROGRAMS
Our interdisciplinary research, professional development and community partnerships all center around six areas of focus. Click on the links below to see what our faculty affiliates are working on.
Answers to Coronavirus Questions
Download our easy-to-read flipbook with answers
to many common questions about Coronavirus.
High Interest/low literacy coronavirus materials
Contact Us
For more information, contact Iris Feinberg, associate director, at ifeinberg2@gsu.edu