The purpose of this study is to provide better understanding of self-regulation and implication for adult education by analyzing the recent literature that has been focused on self-regulation of adults. Specifically, 112 articles were reviewed which were published in the major educational and psychological journal indexed in Korea Research Foundation from 2000 to 2008 to investigate the trend and the major findings in self-regulation of adults. The results of this study revealed that the research themes reduced into 4 categories; (1) developing theoretical framework and models including defining constructs, and development pattern of self-regulation (2) measuring self-regulation (3) educating self-regulation (4) exploring relationship between self-regulation and other variables. This study found that the research on self-regulation of adults has been actively published in several journals; the Korean Journal of Educational Psychology, Journal of Educational Technology, the Korean Journal of Psychology. In addition, the most popular theme of research was the exploring relationship between self-regulation and other variables. However, very few studies have been conducted to explore the distinguished characteristics of self-regulation of adults from slef-regulation of children. Finally, it was suggested and discussed the implication for further research on adult education.