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This article presents results of a field study exploring why illiterates start relearning reading and writing at a later age. The project SYLBE focused on reasons and obstacles of participants in basic education classes. The study provides a typology of motivations for learning and thus supports the professional acting of teaching staff in basic education.
Educational research is often focused on biographies. Literacy and basic education frequently use knowledge about biographies as a means for educational support within the scope of catch-up education (“second chance”). The article discusses how biographically generated knowledge can be transferred into pedagogical practice. The authors give up on the idea of a direct “utilization” of biographical insights into practical work – the yield is rather to indirectly stimulate and irritate professiona…
The paper is based upon a qualitative-empirical study in the field of basic education for adults (literacy, numeracy, language, and computer skills). The study is located in the andragogical research on teaching and learning. A constitutive characteristic of the examined basic skills courses is the variety of the participants. The variety is both, didactical challenge and potential, for it enables teaching and learning interactions. With interpreting some data examples the paper aims to show ho…
The research project KLASSIK examines the question of whether it is possible to increase competencies for information processing skills of older people. To this end, training courses that serve as experimental groups, performed a special, metacognitive thinking training. In the project also included comparison groups received no training. Before the treatment a performance test and an intelligence test ensure that both groups come from the same starting conditions. After the final test an appro…
Within vocational training, small and medium-sized enterprises are confronted with various problems and challenges. Such enterprises began to initiate and organize specific continuation education programs within networks and other forms of cooperation in order to overcome these problems. This article evaluates such business networks on the basis of an empirical qualitative study focusing on the requirements and preconditions for effective cooperations.
Corporate case work offers the opportunity to interconnect expertise in both adult and tertiary further education, to commonly solve work related tasks with companies and their employees and to make use of the attained experiences and knowledge through the development of authentic learning material in the form of specific case studies.