ABSTRACT
In spite of some positive rhetoric we have seen that policies and discourses of lifelong learning have, until very recently, generally failed to consider the wider potential of making educational opportunities available to the post-work population. Neither have they acknowledged the aspirations of older people themselves as they embark on their post-work lives. The aim of this chapter therefore is to highlight the issues through a critical overview of the development of key approaches to learning in later life – what has come to be broadly known as educational gerontology – over the last three decades drawing on material from a range of countries. What ideas have been promulgated and where have they come from? We shall trace the emergence and development of educational gerontology, and conclude with a comment on the comparative absence from the debate of the voices of older learners themselves.
