A Psychological Study of Adult Education Participation and Dropout

Abstract

Adult education involves different kinds of people with varying abilities, interests and social characteristics. Whether a person will participate in adult education depends upon a complex interaction between components of his personality, social characteristics, and opportunities participation. These factors influence both the decision of a person to participate and the form, content, and character of the educational activity available. Adult education is concerned with two related phenomena: a field of social activity and a social science discipline. The field of adult education is usually defined by those who organise it as opposed to the participants, and includes learning by adults, from casual incidental "education", a concomitant of social intercourse, to systematic learning accomplished in a formal instructional or institutional setting. The discipline of adult education, which concerns itself with studying educational activities for adults occurring in formal settings, has been defined by Verner as "... the action of an external educational agent in purposefully ordering behaviour into planned systematic experiences that can result in learning for those for whom such activity is supplementary to their primary role in society, and which involves some continuity in an exchange relationship between the agent and the learner so that the educational process is under constant supervision and direction " (1962, p.2).