The authors provide a variety of perspectives on the conceptualization of adult learning, drawing on sociology, psychology, adult education and applied research into how adults experience learning. Bringing together a number of major contributions to current debates about what learning during adulthood is for, what motivates learning, and how best it might be developed, the authors address a range of significant issues: what should be the context of learning programmed for adults, and who should decide?; what are the implications in general and for women in particular of the current emphasis...

This work is a labour of love by the writer Mary Thorpe as a tribute to her much loved Granny O'Rourke (nee Nolan) in an attempt to place the stories she heard and was told into a true and historical context. As a social worker who came across many cases of social deprivation in modern times, in the various Social Work Departments in which she worked in the South East and North West of England, Mary had the dawning realisation regarding what her own Grandmother had been through in even harder times in the late part of the Nineteenth Century and early part of the Twentieth Century in Ireland...