ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a short up-to-date account on adult learning in relation to learning in general and to children’s learning. Adults needed to be able to change, which implies a need to reject earlier learning and engage in new learning. Gradually adult learning became a very important issue. These new tendencies followed two main courses, learning for work and learning for social change. American Malcolm Knowles claimed that adults’ and children’s ways of learning differ and that an increasing focus on adult education should be accompanied by an increased interest in researching and understanding of what characterized adult learning to inform adult education. Whereas questions of the specific character of adult learning were neglected by traditional learning psychology and also by most adult educational research, there has been some often indirect discussion concerning adults’ possibilities for learning.
