終身教育是二十世紀末以來全球最受矚目的教育思潮，早已成為各國教育改革的最高指導原則。終身教育思潮係應社會發展而生，亦因社會變遷而存在，更是個人生存於現代社會中的必要條件；由於知識社會降臨，知識的創造、累積、傳播、分享與應用，正是各國經濟發展最重要的因素，帶給全世界人類的影響力與日俱增。 終身教育係以個人生命全程及其各階段所對應之可能教育為架構，其中成年期明佔個人生命歷程中的絕大部分，正是個人落實終身學習實現終身教育理想最主要的階段。建構學習社會，推展全民終身學習，需要全民參與，這正是終身教育的目標。但是，社會上畢竟存在著一群不會主動參與學習的人口—弱勢族群，包括原住民、身心礙者、高齡者、低收入戶…等等，這群人往往是許多國家在推動成人終身教育時，經常被忽視的一總。為了解國外推動弱勢族群成人終身學習的經驗，以作為國內推展相似課題的參考，本文從探究終身教育領域中弱勢學習族群的成因開始，進而探討國外做法，臺灣推展實況，以及國外經驗帶給臺灣推展弱勢族群終身學習的啟示與反思。 綜觀本文所引述的國家—日、韓、美、英為例，均屬於極重視人權的國家，對於弱勢族群終身學習機會的重視與照顧不遺餘力，從立法保障、教育優先計畫推動、政府部門經費的補助，到積極推展遠距型或社區型的終身學習管道，的確值得臺灣推展弱勢族群成人終身學習參考。臺灣的終身教育系統基本上是以民眾需求為出發點，但是應該更積極進行各類型弱勢族群成人終身學習課程的需求評估，明列教育優先對象，朝向彈性多元發展策略，建構逐步推行機制，確實開發各類型弱勢族群的人力資源與潛能，縮短各族群的社會階層差距，即早實現學習社會的終身教育理想境界。

The thought of lifelong education has become one of the most important principles for the educational revolution all over the world from the end of 20th century on. It has also been a necessity for everyone who exists in the modern society. The lifelong education has been occurring on a person from womb to tomb. The adulthood is the most important period of lifelong education. It is also necessary that all the people joining in learning set up a learning society together. However, some of the disadvantage, such as aboriginal, disabilities, senior citizen, poverties,…and so on, existing in the society are always been neglected because they usually do not take part in learning at all. In fact, the disadvantaged are more necessary than the normal people in life long education. To understand the external experiences of lifelong education for the disadvantaged, the author has discussed the disadvantaged factors form the lifelong learning first of all, expressed the execution from some foreign countries, as Japan, Korea, USA, UK secondarily, then described the situations in Taiwan, and analyzed the inspiration from internal and external cases in the end.