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Educational focus group surveys. Practical experiences from the Wesermarsch district When planning educational measures, education providers in structurally weak areas need to take into account regional peculiarities and potential course participants. For this reason, in a project in the district of Wesermarsch, the instrument of a focus group survey was used to determine people’s educational needs. This article describes the method used and experiences gained, and how the results were impl…
This article discusses participation of older people from five different perspectives: the perspective of images of old age, the perspective of individual potentials for change and participation, the perspective of the creation of public space, the perspective of social relationships and the perspective of structures of care. Participation is thus understood as a combination of personal, social, cultural, communal and societal factors. Education is seen as a central mechanism for building struc…
This article examines the guidelines and objectives of political (societal) and citizenship education in Finland during the past 40 years approximately. During this relatively short period different programmes have arisen which aptly reflect changes which have taken place, in viewpoints, in the social atmosphere and in citizens’ political interests. The article is concerned with the reports of two committees, the Adult Education Committee and the Lifelong Learning Committee, since the beginning…
A third of all families in Germany have a background of migration, which offers a great educational potential for family education. The author points out the increased risk situation of this heterogeneous group and warns against the misleading label as a »target group of particular circumstances«. She gives best practice examples and pleads for the intercultural opening of educational institutions.
The article discusses whether it is necessary and possible to deduce the didactics of adult education from the particularities of the adult age. The authors make the case for understanding didactics of adult education in the continuity of the lifespan and as a modification of general didactics. It should be related to the characteristics of the social situation of adults. Such “didactics for adults” should be complemented by specific “didactics of further education” which focus on specific inst…
The demographic change and the growing demand of skilled workers in Germany puts workers with migration background in the focus of interest in politics, economy, research and, increasingly, of adult education. The following article analyses empirically the relationship between the socio-cultural determinants, which are theoretically embedded in Esser’s model of social integration, and the participation in further vocational education of working adults with a migration background in Germany on t…
The report focuses on empirical data of cultural life from a cultural political perspective. Despite the common experience of growth, a significant increase of cultural life participation cannot be empirically verified with regard to the time budgets applied – at least not of provisions attributed to the narrower definition of culture. There are more visits (especially of large cultural institutions and popular cultural events) but not necessarily more visitors. While the prerequisites for cult…
This article presents the results of an empirical research project in which participants in continuing education and employees were surveyed about their learning times. The survey indicated that (1) continuing education is co-financed on a large scale through the devotion of private time. (2) Individuals show flexibility and commitment in creating their own learning and continuing education times. (3) Times can no longer be clearly assigned to “learning” and “working” even from a subjective poi…
