Necessity of Having Philosophy of Adult Education as an Interdisciplinary Field at a Graduate Level

The aim of this paper is to introduce Philosophy of Adult Education as an interdisciplinary field at a graduate level. Currently, the field of Philosophy of Education and Adult Education are offered as two independent fields at some universities. This paper strives to create a link between Adult Education and Philosophy of Education. In this paper, a hundredyear history of philosophical studies in adult education has been reviewed. Although the major topics in Philosophy of Adult Education can be divided into three sections, in this paper, mostly the first section is reviewed. The three sections include: A) Categories presented in Philosophy of Adult Education, such as Elias’ and Merriam’s classification and Hiemstra’s classification. B) Study of philosophical roots of adult literacy approaches, such as functional literacy, information literacy. C) Recognition of thinkers in the field of Philosophy of Adult Education, such as Gruntvig and Mezirow. Finally, seven decades of adult education and literacy in Iran are reviewed and efforts are made to show that the cause root of literacy failure in Iran is partially due to lack of philosophical foundations. So this