This monograph is part of the study materials for the one-semester distance education unit, Adults Learning: The Changing Workplace A, in the Open Campus Program at Deakin University (Australia). It explores four complex and interrelated issues: how vocational educators view their own practice, the characteristics and aspirations that distinguish adult learners, an overview of learning theories drawn from psychology, and an expanded view of human learning. Section 1 views adult education in a social context. Section 2 provides an overview of three alternative approaches by which one can understand how vocational educators view their practice. It attempts to ground current practice in various views of the relationship between theory and practice as a basis for linking how one acts with how one views the world. Section 3 focuses on the concept of adulthood, exploring what it means to stand in life as a mature human being and what it means to engage in learning activities as an adult. Section 4 presents an overview of established learning theories drawn from the field of psychology. Psychological views of learning that have emerged over the past century are discussed in the context of two types of theories--behavioral and cognitive--each reflecting a particular approach to science with corresponding implications for how instruction is conceived. Section 5 introduces a number of themes that contribute to an expanded or enriched view of human learning. Focus is on reconceptualizing the learning process and reconstructing instructional events so that inherently human qualities can be recognized and nurtured within vocational education practice. Six readings follow: "Vocational Education in the 1990s" (D. Weir); "Emancipatory Vocational Education" (M. Rehm); "Training and Development Programs in Vocational Teacher Education Departments" (J. Leach); "Vocation as the Quest for Authentic Existence" (K. B. Homan); "Critical Adult Education" (D. Little); and "Praxis and Training" (D. Little). A 13-item annotated bibliography is appended. (YLB)