Adult learning within lifelong learning: a different lens a different light

Abstract

Adult learning is located within a lifelong learning framework both as a lens for looking back and for projecting forward. The competing views of adult and lifelong learning are discussed and a preliminary overview of what has been achieved within adult learning in the last 10 years in South Africa is given. Lifelong learning and the learning region are suggested as frameworks for providing a ‘connected up’ approach to human development, and a possibility for finding ‘troubled spaces of possibilities’ (Edwards and Usher, 2005) to create new solutions to old problems.