Abstract:

Adult education is an important scientific field, a field of study, but also an important field of practice. However, we can look at adult education from different perspectives. We can perceive adult education from the point of view of the American approach, represented primarily by Malcom Knowles, who mentioned that adult education was created mainly due to the fact that adults were not satisfied with the way they were educated. He saw adult education as the art and science of supporting adults to learn. In the Czech Republic, the term ‘adult education’ is not used, but it is used a term andragogy. In the framework of andragogy, we can talk about both a narrower and a broader concept. A narrower definition is adult education when the work is mainly in the field of education. A broader definition works with the adult person and his complexity throughout his entire life. One of the concepts used and developed is Integral andragogy which deals with an adult person during his life path. This concept was created and is being further developed at the Palacký University in Olomouc thanks to Vladimir Jochmann and Dusan Simek. Their successors spread the ideas in other workplaces as well. The article presents a theoretical work in which the author defines the concept of Malcom Knowles in comparison with Andragogy and Integral andragogy developed by Jochmann and Simek. In this area, he talks about the narrower and broader definition of Andragogy.

Keywords:

Adult education, andragogy, integral andragogy.