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The current issue of the research journal Adult Literacy Education: The International Journal of Literacy, Language, and Numeracy includes a review of the fourth edition of Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide.  

Margaret Becker Patterson, of Research Allies for Lifelong Learning, writes about what has changed in the book since the third edition was published in 2007. The book, Becker Patterson concludes, could be a useful resource for a course on adult literacy or a reference point for adult educators and researchers. 

Read an excerpt from the review here:  

The book is well organized topically, and each chapter concludes with a useful one-page summary encompassing the chapter’s major points and takeaways. For example, Chapter 10 introduces five perspectives from around the globe: Confucianism, Hinduism, Maori, Islam, and African indigenous knowledge. In addition to the authors’ introduction and identification of themes, they present five essays explaining non-U.S. perspectives from guest authors well-versed in respective traditions and perspectives on adult education; these essays bring perspectives alive. This chapter helpfully summarizes the “value of engaging with other frameworks” and notes the challenge of thinking “about the purpose of education and learning” outside Western traditions (p. 288). 

This fourth edition retains much of the chapter structure and content from the third edition yet differs from the third in several meaningful ways. The authors updated their examples and research findings from more recent studies throughout each chapter. Although the book still encompasses 16 chapters, the third edition’s 11^th chapter, which reviewed five traditional learning theories (behaviorism, humanism, cognitivism, social cognitive learning, and constructivism), has been removed.  

A new Chapter 2 has been added to cover adult learning and technology.