Editorial: active ageing, social inclusion and wellbeing: benefits of learning in later life

The education of older adults has been considered the fastest growing branch of adult education in post-industrial countries and one of the most crucial challenges facing current adult European education (Formosa, 2000). Early research on the learning preferences, motivations and trends of older persons – as well as the impact of learning on the quality of life of older learners – can be traced to the 1950s (Havighurst, 1953), even before the field of educational gerontology was formally established in the 1975 by David Peterson (1976). In recent years, an unprecedented level of influence of the concept of lifelong learning on policies on active ageing have led to a ‘renaissance’ moment in the practice and research of older adult learning (Glendenning 1992; Findsen & Formosa, 2016). Whilst at the turn of the millennium, one found only a handful of book publications in the field of older adult learning, and the few published articles were often in specialised and off the radar journals, in a space of less than two decades the situation is markedly different. Nowadays, as societies are experiencing, or anticipating, unprecedented number of older persons, the field of late-life learning is firmly established in both adult education and gerontology graduate programmes, as well as mainstream adult education and gerontology journals. Indeed, the field of older adult learning boasts an exciting and innovative field of practice, led by experts who group themselves under the mantles of adult educators, educational gerontologists, geragogists or gerontagogists (Kern, 2014). Learning in later life has entrenched itself as an integral part of adult education research, focusing on the diverse provision of late-life learning, the motivations and interests of older learners; wide-participation and emancipatory policies for older adult learning; and the benefits of learning for learners, providers, and society in general.