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Biographical Orientations for Older People in Adult Education In times of demographic changes and an increasing flexibility of biographies, adult education is in need of adjusting its repertoire. General and highly standardized programmes alone do no longer fit the heterogeneity of its target groups. The article is based on two empirical studies – one focuses on individual management of work path, the other shows the importance of structuring time and activities to elder people. With these, …
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…
Counselling: Changes for a Sustainable Development If counselling should survive as a generally accepted human service at the beginning of the 21st century, a fundamental shift in paradigms and the therewith connected development of sustainable offers for counselling becomes necessary. Permanent co-evolution of needs from clients, economy and society calls for specific skills and knowledge for analysis and coping with multiple subjective realities, ecological contexts, non-linear causalities…
In order to reach real equality of men and women it is necessary to substitute not only women but also men and fathers in their role as an “active” father in family, society and professional life. The article describes education of fathers as a relatively new form of adult and further education focusing the consequences of social change processes and orientating by biographical transitions as there are pregnancy, bir th preparation, to be familiar with the role of parents, separation and di…
Matthias Pfüller outlines the historical development of central and peripheral regions in the former GDR and former West Germany. Both qualities are found to be relatively persistent. Still, there have been successful attempts at bringing centre and periphery closer together, such as the FRG „educational offensive“ in the 1960s and similar efforts in the GDR. Since the 1990s, however, Germany’s inner dissimilarities have not been further reduced, but are rather on the increase. The author dou…
Political education as a par t of general adult and continuing education with regards to lifelong learning and on the background of social change, is confronted with a new challenge. Science, economics, representatives responsible for education and learning of adults and politics are looking for instruments to navigate the consequences of globalization. – The author focusses – besides social questions of inequality – problems of cultural identity as one of these consequences and identifies lear…
The form of social integration of space and time determines the understanding of learning, personality and subjectification. In modernity, organizations form individuals through systematic observation. For this purpose, semiotic techniques of dynamization of persons—calculation, measurement, visualization, rechaotisation—are developed and used pedagogically. Their digitization leads to the autonomization of presentational control and management practices, which operate without organizations as …
The current paper deals with cooperation under the perspective of governance from an organizational view. According to the variety forms of cooperation in the field of adult education, cooperation can be seen as a medium that adult educational organizations can use for their reproduction and coordination in different institutional environment. Based on empirical findings from a case study it can be shown that organizations initiate cooperation for collecting resources and legitimation. In this …
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 International PIAAC study has collected data on competencies of adults in three domains in 25 countries, in many of them for the first time ever. The article provides an overview of central terms, main aims and the methodological approach of this OECD study. It also discusses its potentials and limitations. One limitation is the focus on the labour force, excluding adults older than 65 years, a fast growing part of many populations in times of demographic change. To remedy this limitation,…
