»Werte in der Erwachsenenbildung«

Although adult educators are inevitably confronted with ethical problems in their work, they have not yet developed a code of professional ethics to guide them and justify their actions both to themselves and others. One possible strategy to intensify the discourse on professional ethics, the author suggests, may be to interlink the debates on professional ethics and professionalisation.

The argument in this article is based on a concept that defines values as ‘big principles’. Although the work of education institutions is based on values in that sense, it cannot guarantee those values itself. That is why it is important to not only raise an awareness of values in internal debates among adult educators but also to speak about them explicitly in the classroom. The author believes that pursuing these two strategies makes more sense than formulating a specific ‘ethics of continuing education’.

Learner-oriented quality certification in continuing education (LQW) includes the requirement for education providers introducing this quality development system to speak about their values in their mission statements. Consciously engaging with these explicit values can contribute to reflexive quality development. The article looks at the mission statements of LQW users in terms of the values that are mentioned in an effort to determine whether a shared set of values can be found among adult and continuing education institutions. Overall, there are only a few values that are mentioned more frequently and found at multiple types of education providers simultaneously.

Adult educators often have to work with a small budget; at the same time, they are committed to educational ideals. By examining the mission statements of German adult education centres (Volkshochschulen), the article shows how this tension between the ‘guiding institutions’ of education and cost-efficiency is reflected in the values of these education providers. The analysis shows that while adult education centres do refer to ‘education’ in their mission statements, they also mention, each in a different way, the need for cost-effective actions.

On the basic The article looks at which values (defined as ‘conceptions of what is desirable’) are important to managers in continuing education, especially in terms of their interactions with employees, and to what extent they succeed, according to their own perception, in actually doing what is desirable. A re-analysis of interviews with managers acting under different general conditions suggests that collaboration based on participation and solidarity is especially important to all three managers, regardless of their specific institutional context. However, whether or not the desired form of collaboration actually becomes a daily reality it seems to depend not only on individual leadership styles but also on the specific context.

The main emphasis of this article is on how to deal with value conflicts in teaching/learning situations in adult and continuing education against the backdrop of current social challenges. Based on the description and interpretation of a case study from an integration course, the author suggests possibilities of how to prepare teachers for acting in a pedagogically appropriate and ethical manner.