Flying below the radar? Critical approaches to adult education

Abstract

Defining adult education is an impossible task. It is such a multivalent and amorphous field, comprising different traditions, that definitions are bound to be exclusive, often deliberately so. Some types of adult education take the form of „adult schooling‟ and simply provide adults with a „second chance‟. Other forms of adult education do not extend beyond the narrow remit of adult training and there are also forms of adult education which are run on a purely commercial basis with the market playing an important role here.