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Habit, social milieus and the quality of life, learning and teaching The contribution highlights the topic quality in adult education from the perspective of Bourdieu’s theory of the habit and the on this building concept of social milieus. Thereby attention is drawn to some aspects neglected in the discussion that are of special interest to the social actors and the ”theory of practice” which derives from them: the learners, the practical processes on the organisational level and the que…
The following article focuses the mostly neglected relation between identity and learning by reconstructing foreign learning efforts by adults. In spite of educational policy's proclamation of (continuous) lifelong learning real learning processes are characterized by various discontinuities. Adults deal with these discontinuities by perceiving, describing and structuring them dependent on their self-images as learners. Interpretations of interviews with adult language learners supply evidence …
This article provides an overview of the debate on learning environments and learning locations within adult education research; the authors use a historical review of main research topics in order to understand current learning environments and recent theoretical and empirical discussions. The term of learning environments or learning locations has been introduced into research on adult education in the 1970ies; since this time, each following decade can be characterized by several specific re…
Didactic transition between education and working life This article examines the orientation of vocational training towards “learning areas” in the context of the larger thematic topic of “occupation and education”. The pivotal question around which the whole topic revolves is whether and in what ways the concept of “learning areas” can contribute to a constructive change in the dialectic between education and occupation. It is with this in mind that the relationship between education and p…
Current Aspects of Professional Qualification Consultancy for Companies Professional counselling has to pick up the thread of the real-life in-house training in order to provide companies with efficient counselling services. A first step would be to make companies sensitive to the identification of a call for action to help them to renovate their learning culture. Thus, they need a repertoire of innovations which is based on a cooperative approach and the application of company expertise to …
Times for (re)interpretation Transitions and their adaptation from the perspective of biographical research The contribution asks for the meaning of transitions in the educational system from a perspective of pedagogical biography research. Transitions effectuate initially mainly insecurities, clearing of one’s own basis, development of new perspectives, accepting or changing of the new situation, release of energy and activities for mastery of changes. In the example of an interview passage …
The paper tackles the issue of procedures for the validation of competences, which are used in the tertiary education sector in order to evaluate an individual’s study ability on the basis of his/her vocational qualifications. This contested terrain will be explored by means of the University of Hamburg’s validation procedure (the so-called Eingangsprüfungsverfahren, §38 HmbHG). The focus of interest will be put on a qualitative reconstruction of individual decision-making processes during thes…
Both interest in and understanding of narrative analysis has developed rapidly in recent years and is now a mainstream element of research across many disciplines. In this book, the author illustrates as many facets as possible of the stories people tell about their lives. She demonstrates the interconnectedness between engagements in narrative research and shows that the theoretical understanding of the nature of narrative is bound up with the methods for biographical narrative research. Throu…
This assumption does not seem plausible at first glance, but rather absurd instead. The regular manifestation of modern age as a knowledge-based society on the one hand as well as the consensual acceptance of the appeal for lifelong learning on the other hand, create the opposite of an image in which the pedagogical aspect of continuing education has been lost. The author argues that learners are increasingly left unsupported, lifelong learning has become more fiction than reality and continui…
This article discusses the question how knowledge may be used for new or alternative learning decisions and in how far the post-modern understanding of “knowledge” is involved in this process. More precisely, it is discussed how organisations and individuals use knowledge as a result of learning in general and with respect to continuing learning decisions and how expectations and evaluations regarding the use of continuing education are placed in cultures of learning. The argument is based on l…
