Adult educators create a curriculum whenever they explicitly or implicitly select some objects of knowledge over others, or choose a particular way to handle knowledge in their pedagogy. When the interests reflected in a curriculum are left unexamined, the role of knowledge as a phenomenon of power is not addressed and inequitable social structures may be reproduced and reinforced. By understanding more about the derivation and implications of the knowledge transmitted and created in educational processes, the theoretical and practical tools necessary to support agendas of social change in a conservative context can be created. Close examination of the curriculum expressed in adult education programs can help the work of educators in some of the following ways: it raises awareness of curriculum as process rather than product; it allows practices and values to be brought together meaningfully; it challenges the structures of legitimacy-shaping practices; and it challenges the idea that education is a closed system. Some of the challenges to be overcome are as follows: it can be difficult to create and sustain a coherent and credible bridge between the empirical and sociopolitical aspects of analysis; the huge diversity of adult education as a field makes analysis difficult; and there is a relative lack of indigenous theory in adult education. (Contains 21 references.) (MO)