In this article the authors explore the notion of 'common good' in relation to adult education. They do this by drawing upon the experiences of working-class family members who were both social learners and autodidacts, and who engaged in learning for their own sake and for what they believed to be the common good. The authors use diaries, letters…

This article seeks to understand how adult students perceived education as disseminated by the Workers' Educational Association (WEA). Evidence will be presented from sources not commonly studied, namely WEA student logbooks of tutorial classes. Adult students attending WEA tutorial classes in the 1920s and 1930s recorded their own personal,…