ABSTRACT
When compared to K-12 education, the body of research on adult education is quite small. As a result, adult educators often look to the K-12 research for guidance on decisions about both the process and the content of instruction. However, this guidance can only be useful if it is tempered by an understanding of the fundamental differences between the system of adult education and the system of child schooling. This chapter explores four essential differences between the adult education and child schooling systems and provides advice to practitioners in family literacy programs on how to address the issues raised by these differences.
