Research
We explore how adult education can be made inclusive, digital and effective.
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Digital tools, specialist portals and data – for teachers, researchers, students and interested parties.
Institute
We offer research, transfer and infrastructure for lifelong learning.
Die Arbeitsbedingungen in der öffentlich finanzierten, außerbetrieblichen beruflichen Weiterbildung im Geltungsbereich des SGB II/III sind prekär. Wie diese Arbeitsbedingungen verbessert werden können, legt der Autor, Branchenkoordinator Weiterbildung bei der ver.di-Bundesverwaltung, anhand eines Blicks auf den Mindestlohn-Tarifvertrag Weiterbildung und weitere tarifpolitische Optionen dar.
Debatten sind das »Lebenselixier der Demokratie« – so überschreibt Benedikt Widmaier sein »Stichwort«. Damit Debatten und gesellschaftliche Diskurse einlösen können, was ihnen an Demokratie stärkender, fördernder, gar schaffender Wirkung nachgesagt wird, reicht es nicht aus, die eigene Meinung kundzutun, zu posten oder zu tweeten. Dies gilt besonders in den sozialen Medien, so dass Caja Thimm eine »digitale Werteordnung« fordert. Dass wir Räume für konstruktiven Streit benötigen (Thomas Krüge…
In today’s societies literacy is regarded as the prerequisite for participating in the professional and private spheres of everyday life. It is regarded as a human right, a tool for personal empowerment and a tool to influence the behaviour of individuals, families and communities. Despite the international consensus that literacy skills determine opportunities and provide access to today’s information-based societies, many adults in both industrialized and developing countries find themselves …
This article examines learning at the university, which is located in the institutional context of the university with its structural conditions. The analysis of learning at universities opens research perspectives, to which the adult education science can deliver substantial contributions.
This article presents the results of a recent online survey of graduates of the Austrian Academy of Continuing Education. Methodically, the survey’s results on benefit items are interpreted and answers to open questions are analyzed by qualitative content analyses. Empirical findings are subject to an interpretation using concepts of professionalization and the political agenda of validation of informal and non-formal learning. An important finding is, that WBA enhances individual professionali…
The paper raises the question of how inclusion, in the sense of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, is operationalized in institutional learning settings for adults. It presents findings of a qualitative pilot study. Based on a relational theory of space, the findings elicit a conceptual model of the architecture of inclusion at public places of learning for adults. The model illuminates the way social space is constituted in and by the actions of professionals, and th…
Functional illiteracy is often perceived as being connected to a strong taboo. Nevertheless new empirical results show, that there is a widespread personal knowledge about functional illiterates. About 40?% of adults know someone who shows low performance in literacy. This knowledge theoretically offers great potential to inform those performing low in reading and/or writing about possibilities in Adult Basic Education. This potential however is by far not fully exploited. By the majority those…
Publically funded adult education has rarely contributed to the increase of educational equality. Often enough, it has been beneficial to those who had already enjoyed their share of education and employment. The author reflects on the German post-war history of continuing education and identifies several cycles of financial distribution. The initial focus of adult education was on educationally ambitious citizens. Based on a socio-political motivation, the learning of employees became increasi…
Environmental education that fosters meaningful community participation and learning has been considered a requisite to sustaining our human and natural environments in many of the global conferences, agreements, declarations and charters since the 1972 UN Conference on the Environment in Stockholm. Despite this growing consensus there is a small amount of published research in Australia in this field of practice we have decided to call popular and informal environmental education – education t…
From the “Göttinger 18” in the “Wyhler Wald”. The learning movement of a social movement beginning in 1957. 18 German nuclear physicists signed a declaration in 1957 in which they refused to take part in the production, testing and use of nuclear weapons. This “Göttinger Declaration” was the beginning of the anti-atomic energy movement, which subsequently developed into a self-organised educational scene. One symbol of this is the Wyhler Wald Adult Education Centre in Baden, which the article …
