Counselling and demand-driven adult learning

This paper advocates various roles for counselling in order to promote lifelong adult learning. Demand-driven adult learning underlines the importance for counsellors to recognize the wide diversity that is evident in adult learning. The paper argues that counselling for adults must fully take into consideration adult learners' psycho-social demands and economic realities: the need for adults to learn throughout life, the economic contributions of unpaid work by adults, and the sense of social responsibility manifested by adult learners. Counselling faces formidable challenges when assisting the adult learning process: learner-focused information services, psychological techniques to stimulate and support adult learning, a self-efficacy approach to adult learning, a gender-sensitive approach to adult learning, support for workplace adult learning activities, school violence management by adults, an active and productive approach to ageing, intergenerational learning, and psycho-social measures to remove barriers to adult learning. © 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers.