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What is adult development? What relevance do adult development theories and models have to the practice of adult basic education? Our philosophy of adult development informs our teaching. For example, if we believe that people mature by passively absorbing knowledge and reacting to their environments, our instruction differs from that of teachers who assume knowledge is constructed and that development depends on active participation with the environment.

In this article, I discuss several approaches to adult development and their related implications for instruction. Clark and Caffarella (1999) note," Theories [serve] as a lens through which we view the life course; that lens illuminates certain elements and tells a particular story about adult life"(p. 3). The four lenses through which adult development will be seen are: behavioral/mechanistic, cognitive/psychological, contextual/sociocultural, and integrative.