Introduction

This Reader brings together major contributions to the exploration of the nature and significance of the learning that happens beyond school. This is adult learning, although some readers may identify more with a type of provision such as continuing education and training, access, vocational education and training (VET), further and higher education, nurse education and human resource development (HRD). The list could be even longer, for as Squires so clearly outlines (see Chapter 6), the rapid growth in this field over the last decade, and its increasing diversity of context and curriculum, means that our field can properly be considered to be any educational or training activity engaged in by adults, whether formal, non-formal or informal.