ABSTRACT

Mark Tennant is Professor of Adult Education at the University of Technology in Sydney, which for many years has been a leading research centre in this area. Tennant is internationally known for his book Psychology and Adult Learning, which was published for the fi rst time in 1988 and later in new editions in 1997 and 2005. For many years Tennant has had a special interest in the development of personal identity and the self, especially in adult education and in relation to postmodern and social constructivist approaches. The following chapter is a slightly abridged version of an article fi rst published in 1998 in the International Journal of Lifelong Education, which discusses the postmodern tendencies of instability and fragmentation of the self and how this challenges traditional aims of adult education to develop the self-understanding, self-esteem and self-confi dence of the students.