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ISBN 978-0-473-36124-2

This monograph aims to provide a brief but critical history of adult and community education in Aotearoa over the past fifty years. It draws on a substantial body of research much of which has yet to be published. The field of adult and community education is very broad and it may be approached from many different perspectives (R. M. Tobias, 1996b). For the purpose of this monograph, however, we have not attempted to embrace all forms and aspects of the field but instead have focused primarily on those activities which have had adult learning as their main purpose and ‘community’ as their contexts. This implies that our focus has not been on learning by children and teenagers, or on institutional, credentialled or industrial learning. This does not mean, however, that all such learning has been excluded from our history, but rather that our focus has not been on these forma of learning.