ADULT EDUCATIONmost of its settings and branches, adult educators
of all types deploy the entire array of pedagogies
from rote memorization to classic lecture-recita-
tion to the creation of self-sustaining ‘‘learning
communities.’’ Few central methodological tend-
encies demarcate distinct factions within the field,
or the field itself from other types of education.
Visible variants, such as the training and facilita-
tion models, serve only partially to distinguish
different segments of the field; and even these
differences stem more from the particular histo-
ries, conditions, aims, and clients of those seg-
ments than from distinct disciplines, theories, or
methods. Other methodological tendencies, such
as widespread reliance on adult experience and
self-direction as foundational for instructional de-
sign and delivery, reflect differences between adult
and childhood learning more than a distinctly
adult pedagogy (Merriam and Cafferella 1991).
Adult learning has several well-established char-
acteristics that distinguish it from learning earlier
in the life cycle: greater importance of clear practi-
cal relevance for learning, even of higher-order
reasoning skills; the relatively rich stock of experi-
ence and knowledge to which adults relate new
learning; ‘‘learner’’ or ‘‘student’’ as a role second-
ary to and embedded in adult familial, occupation-
al and social roles; and the application of adult
levels of responsibility and self-direction to the
learning process. Indeed, at the level of practice,
the learning characteristics of those being educat-
ed (i.e., adults) serve to distinguish adult educa-
tion as a distinct field much more clearly than do
distinctively adult educators, organizations, or
methods.
DEVELOPMENT OF ADULT EDUCATIONThe remarkable variety of contemporary adult
education directly reflects complexity in the social
environment and the necessities and rewards asso-
ciated with mastering that complexity. Like school-
ing, adult education emerged and developed in
response to the social, economic, political, cultur-
al, and demographic forces that produced increas-
ing structural and functional differentiation as
one of the few clear trends in human social evolu-
tion. As social roles and practices proliferated,
conveying the skills, knowledge, and disciplines
that they embodied required the intentional and
organized teaching and learning that is education.
As productivity, wealth, power, and status became
more dependent on the mastery and application
of knowledge, education to acquire it increasingly
occupied the interest and resources of individuals
and groups.The long and discontinuous trajectory of in-
creasing social complexity within and among hu-
man societies yielded very little formal and nonformal
adult education before the advent of industrial-
ism. Prior to the Neolithic revolution, education
of any type was rare; informal socialization with-
out conscious, systematic intent to train or study
sufficed for most cultural transmission and role
acquisition. Agrarian, state-organized societies, es-
pecially the early and late classical civilizations of
the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, developed the
first formal and nonformal schooling in response
to the increasing complexity of knowledge, admin-
istration, social control, and production. This
schooling was delivered by professional tutors and
early versions of primary and secondary schools to
educate the children of political, military, and
religious aristocracies for their rulership roles; in
schools and colleges to train bureaucratic and
religious functionaries, professionals in law and
medicine, and the elite in the liberal arts; and by
nonformal systems of apprenticeship, such as the
medieval guilds, for specialized crafts and trades.
Although there are many examples of adults seek-
ing informal education from adepts in the arts,
religion, and natural philosophy, the educational
systems of agrarian societies were devoted mostly
to preparation for adult roles.The widespread and diverse adult education
of the present era emerged in response to the
development of modern, urban, scientifically and
technologically complex societies. Education be-
came an important and dynamic institutional sec-
tor, one that gradually extended its territory from
basic schooling for the literacy, numeracy, and
general knowledge necessary to market relation-
ships, industrial production, and democratic poli-
tics to adult continuing education for advanced
professional workers in the theoretical and ap-
plied sciences. With some exceptions, the pattern
of extension was from earlier to later stages of the
life cycle (finally yielding education for learning
that is ‘‘lifelong’’) from the upper to the lower
reaches of class and status hierarchies (yielding