Adult education, not to be confused with child education, is a practice in which adults engage in systematic and sustained educating activities in order to gain new knowledge, skills, attitudes, or values. It includes any form of learning adults engage in beyond traditional schooling, from basic literacy to developing individual self-actualization and personal fulfillment as a lifelong learner. In particular, adult education reflects a specific philosophy about learning and teaching based on the assumption that adults can and want to learn, that they are able and willing to take responsibility for the learning, and that the learning itself should respond to their needs.

Driven by what one needs or wants to learn, the available opportunities, and the manner in which one learns, adult learning is affected by demographics, globalization and technology.

The learning happens in many ways and in many contexts just as all adults' lives differ. Adult learning can be in any of the three contexts:

The World Bank's 2019 World Development Report on The Changing Nature of Work argues that adult learning is an important channel to help readjust workers' skills to fit in the future of work and suggests ways to improve its effectiveness.

In a study, Greenberg compared the orthographic and phonological skills of functionally illiterate adults and children. The study found that although functionally illiterate adults performed similarly in reading tasks, children were more successful in vocabulary and spelling tests. This means that functional illiterate adults are at a similar level of education as children, yet they differ in strengths of different skills.

The difficulty in many countries is that education systems cater to children, the problem with this being that the adult brain works and learns in a very different manner to a child's developing brain. Teaching a 6-year-old how to write is a very different process to teaching a 30-year-old with similar writing skills. Several things must be taken into consideration when teaching adults as opposed to children. Although functionally illiterate adults have similar literacy functionality to developing children, they differ greatly in how they retain information. Adult learners are also educating themselves out of choice, as opposed to children who are forced to attend school. Finally, adults are likely to have increased anxiety in a classroom, because with ageing they "are more likely to experience this fear of failure, which can heighten [their] anxiety, especially if [their] experience of education in the past was not always positive." These all contribute to a difference in the way adults need to be taught.

There are ways that adults are able to gain confidence in a classroom. Taming anxiety in a classroom comes down to two things: comfort and support. Comfort can be found by fulfilling Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Maslow's hierarchy of needs highlights the importance of getting enough rest, eating healthy, and having a stable life. These criteria are the same for children, yet finding stability for adults can be more difficult. In many cases, adult learners have a job or have to support themselves, which adds increased pressure in addition to education. Support is also necessary in the success of adult learning. This means having a work or classroom environment that makes one feel comfortable. Feeling comfortable means feeling as though one has emotional support in the classroom, and having a space where asking for guidance is encouraged rather than shamed.

Educating adults differs from educating children in several ways given that adults have accumulated knowledge and work experience which can add to the learning experience. Most adult education is voluntary, therefore, the participants are generally self-motivated, unless required to participate by an employer. The practice of adult education is referred to as andragogy to distinguish it from the traditional school-based education for children – pedagogy. Unlike children, adults are seen as more self-directed rather than relying on others for help.