Four speeches delivered at the Research in Adult Basic Education Conference are presented. The first paper, by Larry Martin, describes his preliminary investigation into psychosocial characteristics of adult basic education and adult secondary education participants. The second paper, An Alternative Program for Attaining Adult Literacy, by Gordon Godbey, focuses on the power of instructional technology to bring about a more effective literacy delivery system to reach adults who will participate or cannot participate in the current system. The third paper, by Gordon Larson, is a review of the literature on occupational literacy and indicates that the impact of literacy programs on occupational success has been limited. The final paper, by Kenneth Mattran, describes a new instructional model which, the author argues, is a significant improvement in current English-as-a-second-language program practices. (LRA)