ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the elements of a curriculum theory of adult and lifelong education–one, that is, which is addressed to problems of the aims, content and methods of adult learning in a context of knowledge, culture and power. The necessity for curriculum theory of adult and lifelong education arises in part from the contradiction between the scale of its universal potential and the parochialism of the 'disciplines of education' and 'adult characteristics' approaches. A distinction needs to be made between educational innovation and curriculum development. At the level of philosophy all education involves some consideration of needs, access and provision: they are all crucial to understanding schooling. The chapter suggests that models of social welfare policy may illuminate the functional relation of adult learning to schooling. What is generally called 'continuing education' manifestly reproduces the curriculum categories of schooling.
