With an increase in life expectancy in modern complex communities, there will be a prolonged period, post-retirement, in which older adults will seek meaningful projects. Juxtaposed with the longer period after retirement is the realisation that life is nearing the end. This paper draws on research undertaken from 2003-2010. The purpose of the…

When adult students write their life story, they gather selected life experiences and transform these onto the written page. In the course of this literary process they revisit sites of the past and reflect on the meaning of past events; many reconstruct these events from the point of view of the present, and most close their narrative by…

In the last decade of the twentieth century nearly 40 million people enrolled in the programs of the U.S. Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS). This chapter provides a broad-brush history of the emergence of the present-day AELS in the United States over the last four hundred years. Exhibit 2.1 provides some historical signposts for keeping…