Journal of Educational Sciences > Volume 4, No. 2, 1992

The Need for a Unified Arabic Definition of Adult Education / Noor El-Dean M. Abdel-Gawad

Many authors who write in the field of adult education avoid defining its concept. Therefore. this paper attempts to answer three major questions relating to this problem. First.why do authors always avoid defining adult education. Second. what are the obstacles facing the achievement of a unified Arabic definition of adult education? The thrid.is there a need for such a definition? and why?
However, a major group of writers prefer to deal with some aspccts of adult education rather than its concept because of the complexity of defining such a concept. The study exemplified six obstacles in this concern: the newness of adult education as a science the multitude of terms without accurate definition. the difficulty of defining the adult himself. the correlation between the concept of adult education and the level of development in societies. the obscurity of the concept of adult education among the public. And the diversity of institutions responsible for planning and implementing adult education programs