Teaching the Skills That Matter in Adult Education
Teaching the Skills That Matter in Adult Education (TSTM) was a national leadership initiative of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE). AIR led the effort from 2018 through 2025.
As part of this project, AIR developed the TSTM toolkit (with issue brief, a case study, lesson plans, and an annotated bibliography) to train teachers to integrate the skills that matter to adult students using approaches that work across critical topics (see table below).
TSTM provided tools and training to adult educators to teach transferable skills students need in these critical contexts. Thirty-six states were trained with the goal of using high-quality professional development materials to build state capacity that improved instruction at the program level.
| THE SKILLS THAT MATTER | THE APPROACHES | THE TOPICS |
|---|---|---|
| Adaptability & willingness to learn | Integrated & contextualized learning | Civics education |
| Communication | Problem-based learning | Digital literacy |
| Critical thinking | Project-based learning | Financial literacy |
| Interpersonal skills | Health literacy | |
| Navigating systems | Workforce preparation | |
| Problem solving | ||
| Processing & analyzing information | ||
| Respecting differences | ||
| Self-awareness |
