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The text examines past and ongoing boundaries adult learners may face, and argues for structural understanding of disciplinary mathematics alongside contextual knowledge and skills. It emphasizes enabling adults to engage confidently with mathematical activities across a lifetime, supported by socially inclusive participation. 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The text highlights economic and social inclusion goals and workplace-related needs as key drivers.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What is the main argument about what adult learners need?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The text argues for developing structural understanding of disciplinary mathematics together with contextual knowledge and skills. This combination helps adults understand and engage with mathematics in diverse circumstances.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What kinds of barriers can arise from the past?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Barriers include restricted access to mathematics education due to socio-economic, socio-political, and cultural-historic factors. 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FitzSimons  \nUniversity of Melbourne  \nAustralia  \n\u003C[gfi@unimelb.edu.au](gfi@unimelb.edu.au)>  \nAbstract  \nAdults return to study mathematics for a range of varied and complex reasons. This article addresses the boundaries and barriers that adult learners of mathematics may have faced in the past, or in the present and the future. Taking into account the impact of our era of rapid technological change, I argue for the importance of developing structural understanding of disciplinary mathematics together with the equally important contextual knowledge and skills necessary for understanding and engaging with mathematics in often vastly different circumstances from the past. The goal is for adult learners to feel confident, socially included, and able to participate in the mathematical activities with which they are confronted over a lifetime.  \nIntroduction  \nAdults return to study mathematics for a range of varied and complex reasons. Although some programs focus on preparing for entrance into specific professions or vocations, other more general programs often aim at meeting economic and/or social inclusion goals. In many countries formal mathematics curricula have given way to sets of learning outcomes where the focus is on what learners can do rather than what they know and how they know it. One consequence is that adult numeracy education (as it is commonly known) consists of collections of mathematical tasks which necessarily have obvious links to practical applications. In vocational education this can often take the form of solely those tasks that are deemed to be of immediate use and easy to demonstrate. Often for lack of available time, this is likely to come at the expense of developing depth of mathematical knowledge and understanding.  \nA second major issue globally is that curricula and learning outcomes in general tend to focus on past and present economic and societal demands, even though these are both undergoing massive change as exponential rates of technological advance reconfigure how people live and how they will work, or not, as the case may be. In this article my aim is argue the case for ensuring that the learners (who have often missed out in earlier years) develop meaningful structural understandings of number, space, and shape that will enable them to continue to build on their mathematical (and other) learning throughout a lifetime, and to understand the mathematical communications of others at work and in civic life generally.  \nIn this article, I will focus on adults, on learning, and on mathematics, separately and collectively. Focusing on adults, I will address briefly the possible interests that they might have in learning mathematics, particularly in a fractured and fragmented world with constantly changing horizons in terms of politics, economics, technology, the environment, and so on. Focusing on mathematics, I will identify three different perspectives on mathematics, briefly summarise what doing mathematics means at work, and consider the importance of mathematics education in relation to democracy. Focusing on learning (set in the context of the adult world of work), I will address the need for workplace based innovation (as well as standardisation), and the importance of informal learning at  \nwork. I will draw on Bernstein’s theories to stress the importance of understanding the big ideas of mathematics, and hence its underlying structures and relationships, as well as the crucial importance of contextual knowledge. Finally, in order to support the kind of mathematics education necessary in this era of globalisation and rapid change, bringing about uncertainties to a degree not previously experienced in human history, I will draw parallels between knowing in the discipline of mathematics and in the discipline of music.  \nAdults: what are their interests in learning mathematics?  \nIn this ","cbCaioF3VdvJgdvV","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaioF3VdvJgdvV","pdf",165165,12,"English","# Introduction\n## Adults: what are their interests in learning mathematics?\n### The past: unfinished business","[{\"question\":\"Why do adults return to study mathematics?\",\"answer\":\"Adults return to study mathematics for varied and complex reasons. The text highlights economic and social inclusion goals and workplace-related needs as key drivers.\"},{\"question\":\"What is the main argument about what adult learners need?\",\"answer\":\"The text argues for developing structural understanding of disciplinary mathematics together with contextual knowledge and skills. This combination helps adults understand and engage with mathematics in diverse circumstances.\"},{\"question\":\"What kinds of barriers can arise from the past?\",\"answer\":\"Barriers include restricted access to mathematics education due to socio-economic, socio-political, and cultural-historic factors. Examples include poverty, chronic illness, early school leaving, discrimination, and disruptions from war or forced relocation.\"}]","Adults Learning Mathematics - transcending boundaries and barriers in an uncertain world - Abstract | PDF",1792065952]