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Education for sustainable development is being practiced exemplary in Sweden, Finland, Great Britain, France and the Netherlands. This outcome is the result of the present attempt of a European comparison in sustainable education. Since reliable indicator systems are absent at present, with which one could measure whether a country practices sustainable development more efficiently than others, the estimation of the author is based on surveys with official institutions and conventional assessme…
Keeping an eye on the practice of management in further education institutions, the observer will encounter a rich variety of changing management strategies. Johannes Hartkemeyer, himself director of a Volkshochschule, scrutinizes past crazes and sets up guidelines for dealing with ever-changing fashions on the one hand, and organisational development on the other hand. His advice is to be a »learning organisation«, watch out for »mental models« of the organisation in a permanent process of ref…
With respect to the Spatial Turn, an orientation becomes visible which clearly refers to the materiality of spatial arrangements. This trend to re-establish materiality entails the risk of returning behind the state of the Spatial Turn achieved so far. One opportunity to avoid the “space trap” might be to turn to a topological perspective. Such a perspective in adult education opens up for removing blind spots in the reception of the Spatial Turn and thus for the introduction of a frame that ca…
More popular than its reputation Learning success controls in adult education The research project called “LeKo“ of the European Federation for Catholic Adult Education (KBE), which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research has analysed how learning success controls can be included in all areas of adult education and it has analysed which attitudes participants have towards it. The first empirical results are presented here. Thereafter the pedagogical-instrumental value is …
The National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) reflects upon adult learning from the perspective of a life profile. The article describes the system and methodological approach of the NEPS with a special focus on the group of adults. The education and employment history as well as the consequent competence development of the adult working age population is analyzed. Overall, 60,000 people are surveyed in the NEPS including more than 11,000 adults. First data is already available to the expert publ…
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…
Construction of reflexive acting in work related learning adult education in the context of the company With the arising of post industrial work relations employment contracts, learning and further education develop to an important factor of success in companies. In an increasingly customer orientated and globalized economy, a reflective work action has become possible and necessary both in view of subject related developments and work environments and structures. This double reflexibility …
The article is the answer of the (female) author to three questions for the understanding, the development and the most important tasks of gender democracy now and in the future. The actual development of gender democracy as a political target is seen critically by Barbara Stiegler similar to the view of Peter Döge. But at the field of education gender democracy has to be understood as a target in general. Gender mainstreaming as an integrative educational task and issue presupposes gender …
Adult education is a field that is strongly shaped by tensions between scientific and political demands. The development of competencies as well as the idea of continuing to learn throughout the whole life are topics that have been debated in science and policy for many years and are still of great importance today. This dissertation deals with the relationship between science and European education policy in adult education by analyzing scientific journal articles and political documents from …
So far, numeracy as part of basic education has only been considered peripherally in the German-speaking countries, regarding the scientific as well as the practical approaches of adult education. In this article, theoretical and conceptual lines of the discourse are linked systematically. In addition, it is argued for an extension of the discourse by including the concept of subject-oriented basic education, which is based on the concept of numeracy as social practice. Initial findings from tw…
