Authenticity in adult learning

This paper is concerned with the relationship between authenticity and adult learning and prompted by some studies in which adult ‘authentic learning’ is a central concept. The implication revealed by them is that real‐worldness of learning contexts, learning content and learning tasks is perceived as conferring authenticity on learning. Here, however, it is argued that: (i) authenticity is a way of being hence lies at the heart of understanding adult learning; (ii) authenticity is a way of being hence neither emerges from, nor is conferred by, learning contexts, learning content or learning tasks, regardless of how ‘real world’ they may be; (iii) Being and Having Attitudes, and Actuality and Possibility orientations, are inextricably bound up with authentic and inauthentic modes of being and must be also be accounted for in understanding authenticity in adult learning.