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The remit of this 21-month empirical project was to explore what makes numeracy teaching meaningful to adult learners. The study breaks new ground in looking in depth at this issue with respect to adults. The project began in December 2002, based in three colleges of [further education] FE in different geographical areas in England. Integral to the project were three [teacher-researchers] TRs based in each of the three colleges, who worked on the project for approximately one day each week. They collaborated in the design of the project, in the conduct of the fieldwork and took part in the analysis. The project investigated four adult numeracy classes, three day classes and one evening class, with 80 students in total, who were working between entry level 1 and level 2. The two principal methods of data collection were semi-participant observation within the classroom and loosely structured interviews. The study explored a particular and limited cohort of adult learners: these were students who attended discrete numeracy classes on a voluntary basis, who worked with very good teachers and were generally very well motivated. As this is a relatively small-scale, interpretative project, we are unable to claim that these findings are representative of a larger population. Nevertheless, we consider that our findings have wider implications for the teaching and learning of adult numeracy. Main findings include: numeracy teaching generally becomes meaningful to students when it is related to their own purposes and needs and they can see an intrinsic reason for learning; the teacher plays a crucial role and the quality of teaching is at least as important as the mathematical content; and students' motivations for joining, and continuing to attend, numeracy classes are many and complex, however, few of these are related to perceived needs within their current employment, or to students feeling that they have a skills deficit in their everyday life. Implications and recommendations for policy and practice are made in relation to practitioners, students, FE college managers, and government.