The study of nonformal education is recast into a broader contextual framework so as to better understand its potential, limitations, and significance. Emphasis is on considering commonalities in nonformal education, as well as its differences from schooling, in relation to processes of social change. The paper considers nonformal education from an analytical and conceptual perspective rather than from a practioner's perspective. The present set of assumptions regards nonformal education from a human deficit view and sees it as effecting social change through raising consciousness and comptetence. What must be realized is that nonformal education is a social product interpenetrating and interacting with other social domains. The need is for a shift in emphasis from an overly psychological view toward a more balanced view that would include societal factors.For example, the context within which nonformal education takes place must be taken into account; its definition will vary from revolutionary to nonrevolutionary, and underdeveloped to developing environments. Research must examine the social attributes of nonformal education including (1) its recruitment, management, and mobility function; (2) its internal features; (3) and its societal charter, that is, its institutional definition. Suggestions include the formation of an agency which possesses socialization functions and serves as a system of social exchange. (KC)