Politische Bildung

The article focusses on the importance of time for the political adult education. Current socio-cultural and socio-economic challenges – in particular: the commodification and acceleration in the context of education and learning – results in a wide range of pressing time issues. However the adult education und the political education pay little attention to the importance of time. For this reason, this issue will be deepened in the article. First, the situation of the political adult education and secondly, the state of research are examined. On the base of the findings, three approaches are pointed out, which emphasize the importance of time for the political adult education: political education as a process and as a deceleration and also as a subject to understand and judge the temporality of politics and society as a necessary condition to participate in shaping the time structures. The paper ends with an outlook and open-ended questions, which adjoin the time theoretical considerations.

Political Education has a long tradition in Austrian adult education. In the period of the Second Republic, ist is cinsidered marginalized. A closer look puts this assumption into perspective. Political education is widely party-centered and present in large-scale organizations such as the Federation of Trade Unions. There is a wide and confusing institutional landscape. With a few exeptions, political education is marginalized within traditional adult education such as the peoples universities (Volkshochschulen). Entirely lacking is a broad theoretically founded empirical survey and continuos research. Moreover, basic empirical data are missing. Against this background, this article outlines an overview on the current status trying to specify and qualify the assertion of a marginalized political education. It shows that political education is partly apolitical. Comparisons with Germany allow a better appraisal.

While the calls to take more notice of the significance of migration for adult education are loud and clear, notably little attention is paid to them with regard to work on categories. In adult education, fundamental theoretical work on definitions of “migration” is still far from complete. Even though individual studies deal with the term, it seems that attempts to clarify categories remain scarce. If adult education research on migration has a genuine interest in examining the risks of the hitherto essentialist course, the none-too simple task of preserving the term “migration” from categorial closedown remains a serious challenge.

The article presents the results of a DFG project on program planning of workplace learning, which was conducted between June 2013 and May 2015 at the Department of Adult Education/Continuing Education at the Humboldt University of Berlin. The central questions were: a) How do internal and external stakeholders influence the program planning and training design in the context of workplace learning (targeted audiences, objectives, contents, didactic fields of action)? b) Which specific forms of management and coordination of action deliver what kinds of results and benefits? The research design consisted of three comp any case studies. For each case study nine to twelve expert and problem-centered interviews, as well as a program analysis were conducted. So far the research on workplace learning has mainly offered insights on influencing factors of participation and organizational structures. There has been only a limited number of studies focusing specifically on program planning in the context of workplace learning. The contribution of the project is both empirical and theoretical. As a central result program planning is described with the help of a new category: the functions different stakeholders ascribe to workplace learning. Another important result is the detailed description of different program areas within workplace learning.

In the recent years, the effectiveness of training teacher has become a big subject in empirical educational research. In this paper, an exploratory interview study (N?= 3) will be presented, in which the graduates of a general educational teacher training report on the effectiveness of the program. The study examines the question about the impact of the teachers who participated in the General Education Teacher Training. The teaching action here is conceptualized as part of the field of teacher activity and operationalized in this study as a way of planning and carrying out the regular mathematics teaching of respondents. The statements of the interviewees pointed out primarily changes in the methodological area, while substantial substantive impact of the teacher training, in terms of planning and carrying, are hardly observed. Although the participants of the teacher training apparently note a “refreshed” awareness of their educational attitude, the independent transfer of training content in the subject teaching is recognizably problematic. Overall, the results suggest that it may be useful to complete general pedagogical trainings for teachers with a subject-specific supplement which, in accordance with existing research, results a clear technical and situational context that is predictable for successful training concepts.

Little is known about the qualifications of trainers in further vocational education. Some hold a degree in educational sciences. At the same time prospective trainers seem to be part of the target group of programs that specialize in adult education. The study focuses on which contents are intended in these programs and whether they could qualify for a later occupational activity as a training professional. For this purpose the course descriptions of 32 programs were analyzed and 10 responsible program managers were interviewed. While topics of the programs mainly cover human resource- and further education management, the German education system, history, basic concepts and theories of educational sciences and adult education, microdidactic practical knowledge, which relates to the implementation of courses, seems to be subordinate. The responsibles of the programs confirmed the informative value of the course descriptions concerning the contents of the programs. They only saw a limited preparation for the trainer-job through the programs.