This study explores how and why teachers in municipal adult education (MAE) in Sweden use curriculum documents in their teaching and what this reveal about the underlying purposes of MAE. The study draws on mixed-methods data, including a survey completed by 1,321 MAE teachers and follow-up interviews with 63 teachers across different subjects and educational levels. The results showed that teachers when describing the most important objectives of education emphasized purposes with links to socialization and subjectification rather than qualification. However, the purposes that teachers described as permeating the actual educational practices were the reverse, i.e. qualification dominated other purposes. This gap, this study suggests, stems from an arrangement of specific frame factors, namely (i) time (ii) student group composition (iii) teaching materials and (iv) market organization. These structural conditions steer teachers toward lower-level curriculum documents, limiting opportunities to engage with higher-level documents and purposes such as socialization and subjectification. The findings highlight how interrelated institutional and organizational frames shape teaching practices in MAE, reinforcing qualification-oriented approaches despite teachers’ broader educational aspirations. It also demonstrates how previously identified frame factors can influence one another, offering insights into the challenges of balancing educational purposes in adult learning contexts.