This paper will propose, through a socio-historical approach, a detour by the adult learners to tackle the conference issues. To what extent did the development of adult education and training contribute to the turning from teaching to learning in the education conceptions? This paper will be based on documents produced in France in the 60’s. They put a light on the necessity to conceive education actions and pedagogy centred on the adult learning person. They also show that the Permanent Education project, which was then supported by various social groups, aimed at developing adult education and training, but also “contaminating” initial education and changing the School system in its entirety (Schwartz, 1969; Delors 1974). Analysing those documents and situating them in the context of the industrial modernization following WWII will point out what was at stake in that Permanent education project for the various social groups, and why it appeared so important to change practices in the education field. Those reflections led to the birth of a new figure: the adult educator (formateur d’adultes) who became progressively a new professional actor of the education sphere between 1960 and 1980 (Laot, 1999, 2001, Lescure, 2005). I also study the emergence, in the mid 1960’s, of a new expression: this of “Relation to knowledge” (Rapport au savoir), from a critique of the pedagogical relation. Sources that gave birth to that expression can be found in the contemporary literature (Bourdieu, Passeron 1964; Foucault, 1966; Lacan, 1966, Althusser, 1964) and also in the European and International exchanged which occurred in the same years in the field of adult education (essentially Yugoslavia, Germany, the United States and Canada concerning the adult education centres studied). Relying on Jacky Beillerot’s team work on the Rapport au savoir, and following the destiny of that expression through its exponential development in the educational literature from the end of the 60’s up to now and through its inclusion in the works produced by the researchers in educational sciences – which were created in 1967 in France – I’ll show its evolution from adult education to children education sphere. I’ll question similar developments in other European countries, notably comparing with the notions of “Ways of knowing” or “Personal epistemology” which appeared some years ago in the English speaking literature.

Historical approach Document analysis.

The emergence of a new figure (adult educator) and a new way of thinking education (rapport au savoir) in the 1960's in the field of adult education gained afterwards the sphere of children education.