This piece of work looks at how adult literacy learners in the context of an urban Dublin community education centre are motivated by using a blended learning approach to improving their literacy skills. Chapter one introduces the thesis and gives some background to why this topic was chosen. Chapter two presents a review of the literature looking at the debate around critical theory, key adult education theorists, such as Habermas, Freire, and Mezirow as well as publications focussing in on the area of information and communication technologies (ICTs). I also look at the policy in this area. The findings of this piece of qualitative research are presented in Chapter three. The research involved participants, both learners and tutors, in the weekly literacy session and are presented in a case study. Five areas of motivation are presented. In Chapter four the analysis looks at how the theory relates to the practice and examines the findings in view of the literature review. In the final Chapter I review the implications for the future theory and practise of adult education, make some suggestions for further research that could be undertaken, and present a conclusion for the thesis.