Adult and continuing education developed as ad hoc responses to concrete and partial needs. The fact that adult education has gained a broader mission and become regarded as encompassing political and citizenship education, vocational training, general adult education and access courses, and leisure courses presents an ambiguous challenge to the field. The dichotomy between work and leisure seems to be fading within the subjective horizon of adult learners. Adult education and learning must pay attention to a broader subjective context, related to the entire life world, and integrate areas of learning that have hitherto been regarded as separate from or antagonistic to one another. Adult education thinking and the adult education policy agenda must undergo the following discursive shifts: (1) a shift from emphasis on securing access to emphasis on multiple target groups; (2) a shift from focus on education to focus on learning environments; (3) a shift from the view that culture is leisure to the view that work is culture; (4) a shift from focus on citizenship to focus on collective experience; and (5) a shift from a focus on political education to a focus on the tenet that knowledge is political. (MN)