Adult learning offers practical guidelines, underpinned by sound scholarship, for the design and implementation of learning events.

Adult learning offers practical guidelines, underpinned by sound scholarship, for the design and implementation of learning events. The author illuminates this process, which she views as a learning-centred and dialogic endeavour, by drawing on perennial and cutting-edge theory as well as on personal experience. She guides the reader in exploring the theory on adult learners and their needs, the learning process and strategies that educators can use for guiding and facilitating learning. This culminates in a discussion of a specific strategy for designing and implementing dialogic learning events – the seven steps of planning. She explains in practical terms how this strategy puts dialogic teaching into action, using learning tasks to structure dialogue with learners.

• Adult learners – introduction, intelligence and cognitive functioning in the adult years, the concept “adult learner”, generalised characteristics of the adult learner, implications for teaching practice, synthesis
• learning – introduction, constructivism, transformative learning, learning and the brain, approaches to intentional learning, synthesis
• dialogic teaching – introduction, dialogic teaching
• a stance and relation, cooperative learning climate, inviting dialogue, synthesis
• designing and implementing dialogic learning events for adult learners – introduction, the seven design steps, learning tasks, synthesis