problems of education in the 21 st century Volume 22, 2010 99 psychological and pedagogical problems of distance education for adults Sławomir Postek, Maria Ledzińska, Jakub Czarkowski Warsaw university, poland e-mail: spostek@psych.uw.edu.pl, marial@psych.uw.edu.pl, jakubczarkowski@gmail.com Abstract Our main focus is to highlight the most important challenges in distance education aimed at adults: spe- cifc psychological challenges coming from adult development, the problems of quality and evaluation, and the effect particular distance education forms and their content (interactivity, salience, and multime- dia additions) have on adult learning. In the opening section, theoretical grounds for how adults learn, treat learning, how they function in informational stress and in the role of a pupil are presented. This is than followed by the discussion of pedagogical aspects (motivation, self esteem etc) of results evalu- ation and didactical diffculties of planning high quality distance learning. Finally, a review of research results into how different types of material content affects adults’ perception and comprehension and how retention and transfer and infuenced in effect. In the summary, we move on to discuss how b-learning (blended) and c-learning (complementary) could be employed in order to facilitate adult distance learn- ing and propose research felds to explore in this area. Key words: adult education, educational psychology, e-learning, b-learning, quality and evaluation in distance education, adult development. Introduction adult education, and especially distance education aimed at this age group is still more of a terra incognita for the more experimentally oriented psychologists and pedagogues than a system of proven regularities and rules. the main reason for this is that, in recent years, the way of thinking about how adults learn (or even function cognitively) changed rather dramatically. Gone are the long-held beliefs about unavoidable declines in all cognitive areas and increasing mental stiffness, making teaching adults an almost impossible task. instead, more and more ide- as are being put forward suggesting that an adult might be just an apt and motivated learner as a younger pupil. this shift in approach to adult education, although already exercised by many educational centers across the world, has not yet fltered down from theoretical thinking to sys- temic research plans or research paradigms. The separate research felds that brought about the changes remain just that, separate. the need for the development of a whole new educational theory seems to be presenting itself, especially in the face of the fact that distance learning tech- nology keeps developing rapidly, leaving little time for systemic refection. Developing such theory might turn out to be one of the most challenging tasks for educational psychologists and