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The article presents findings of an ethnographical research project concerning the international concept of literacy as social practice. In this project, literacy was analyzed from an individual and a public point of view, focusing on its multidimensional uses and purposes in everyday life. Referring to a broader understanding of literacy as social practice, the study aims at initiating a discussion concerning the purpose and use of literacy among adult educators and practitioners in literacy c…
Sites and trajectories of learning disconnected from schooling and traditional training are discussed against the background of a new scientification of work related to the shift towards an information technological mode of production. This scientification is rooted in a new relation of theory and practice at work. Accordingly, workers play a new strategic role in work processes: they have to optimize procedures, define and search for reasonable objectives, reflect on methods and strategies of …
The following report offers an insight on the theoretical and empirical issue of cultural adult education. It is understood as an institution for the refinement of the aesthetic senses which, according to Welsch, can easily become anesthetic – a situation of suspended sensitivity. A second empirical approach presents the current provisions systematized by three “Portals of Participation“. Cultural educational provisions may be attributed to the “systematic-receptive type“, the “independent-crea…
Diversity management is a popular management approach. It promises to allow diversity in organisations and thus to appreciate people for what they are. It undertakes to recognise different points of view, ideas, abilities and potentials; not to standardise cultural variety but to reinforce it. For adult education, this concept seems highly promising. After all, one claim of educational management is to promote personality development and personal progress in a business context. However, critica…
This article explains what paths adults can opt for in order to acquire a reflexive understanding of time while not being content with a purely goal-oriented, “maximising” improvement in time management. Ms. Hribernik adopts Holzkamp’s approach to first of all describe what such “learning to understand time“ needs to involve before then identifying learning possibilities from an Austrian perspective – possibilities which she sees above all in books, but also in lecture events and the activities…
Educational and Learning Research Based on three texts from the founding editors from the years 1985, 2000 and 2005, in this contribution, past as well as current scientific objectives of empirical educational and learning research, their embedding in theoretical contexts as well as methodical approaches are assessed and supplemented by further references from the author. Albeit the end results of the two founding fathers are, in the various years, rather sobering, it seems fruitful to thin…
The contribution introduces experience orientated learning places such as museums, science centers, zoos, theme parks, but also Brandlands and Urban Entertainment Centers. These learning places complement formal learning and offer room for self-controlled and strong emotionally established learning. Requirements for such hybrid basic approaches are formulated by education and entertainment. These assessments rest upon the results of a research project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education…
At the present time those people are retiring who became the managers of adult evening classes institions during the education campaign around 1970. The author approaches the future alteration of generations in the top management positions by a comparison of the general conditions. These were better around twenty years ago: larger scopes for development, established role as a hub of culture and educational politics. Today the permanently solidifying work is distinct of innovation requirements a…
From 2002 on the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) will be sponsoring 80 regional networks in the context of the „Learning Regions – promotion of networks“ programme. This programme will be scientifically monitored by a consortium formed by the German Institute of Adult Education (DIE), the German Institute of Economic Research (DIW), and the universities of Duisburg and Munich. The author will be in charge of the overall scientific supervision. In his article he pres…
Numeracy practices are always dependent on the social context in which they emerge. These contexts, however, are unstable because of a range of technological and socio-political changes. How does this instability affect people’s agency in the world? After reviewing key approaches to numeracy practices research, we distil key findings from recent numeracy studies. We introduce the concept of the numerate environment to examine the context in which opportunities, supports and demands present them…
