This textbook examines the theory and practice of adult and continuing education. The following topics are among those discussed in 11 chapters: rationale for provision of education for adults (nature of contemporary society and the individual); conceptual framework for adult and continuing education (changing concept of education; teaching, learning, and education; lifelong, continuing, recurrent, and community education; the learning society); adult learners and adult learning; theoretical perspectives on adult learning (theories of Freire, Gagne, Knowles, Mezirow, and Rogers); teaching adults (conditions of learning, approaches to teaching, teaching methods and aids); theoretical perspectives on teaching adults; distance education (industrial capitalism, space-time continuum, dissembled mechanisms and expert systems, reflexivity, individuation); teachers of adults and their preparation (adult educators and their role, training, qualifications, and professionalization); curriculum theory and program planning (historical overview, new perspectives); provision of education for adults in the United Kingdom (providers of education for adults, recent developments, organizations involved in educating adults, research in adult and continuing education); and adult and continuing education as fields of practice and subjects of research and theoretical analysis. Contains 34 tables/figures, a 79-item annotated bibliography of suggestions for further reading, and 499 references. (MN)