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Federal law as envisaged in the socalled Hartz paper provides for the introduction of education vouchers. Is political education concerned? Against this background, the author explores funding structures of political education on the federal as well as on the Länder plane, of municipalities and foundations. Her verdict is disenchanting: many institutions of political education, especially the very small ones, are facing their end. This is corroborated by two statements of experts from the field…
An essential task for administrative staff in adult education is to develop and offer courses. In the field of economic education (basic education), there exist only very few offers and didactic material. Hence, there is a great demand to describe requirements concerning competencies to be taught in this area. Such requirements for competencies may serve as a base for the development of courses in adult education. This article explores the questions on which requirements concerning competencies…
Didactic transition between education and working life This article examines the orientation of vocational training towards “learning areas” in the context of the larger thematic topic of “occupation and education”. The pivotal question around which the whole topic revolves is whether and in what ways the concept of “learning areas” can contribute to a constructive change in the dialectic between education and occupation. It is with this in mind that the relationship between education and p…
Gender skills for adult education Gender mainstreaming is a central maxim for political action all across Europe. However, little effect is yet to be felt in adult education. Where there is gender-sensitive adult education, this is still strongly oriented towards the differential approach. In view of participation rates in general and vocational adult education, and the division of interests within the segments, which is again gendered, the author speaks of a “doubly divided structure”. For …
Large parts of adult education are not being reached through relevant laws at all anymore. Thus a factual deregulation is the consequence. This loss of scope faces a growing provision profundity of those laws thar are tangent to the adult education area and that have been revised lately. The author draws attention to this ambivalent context by means of the most important legal basis of adult education: the adult education laws of the German states and the social statute book III (SGB III).
Already Max Scheler developed a functional definition of education. With Scheler, education is not only not opposed to usefulness, but even prerequisite for reaching certain aims at all. In terms of the postmodernist media and mass society the relationship between education and usefulness has to be reformulated. With reference to Lyotard, the author develops a concept of education as a regulative idea. Under these conditions, individuals are not expected to integrate themselves culturally into…
This contribution suggests a reconstruction of didactic behavior in the context of adult education. Didactics is perceived as a specific kind of practice that can be analyzed with respect to its immanent significances. Thus, criteria of adult education didactics can be identified. These criteria are not only empirically found aspects concerning the conditions of success. Incorporated challenges concerning disciplining, impositions of teaching and authority matter as well. Notwithstanding adult …
The requirement for improving one’s life also concerns the family – and therefore family education. In his documented speech on the occasion of the ceremony for the 60th anniversary of the Catholic Education Centre in Bonn, the author pleads for creating spaces for meetings and relationships as well as for conveying »serenity competences« with family education instead of supporting improvement mania.
The author investigates whether, to which extent and due to which motivation migrants participate in general further education programmes of the City-Volkshochschule (adult education school) of Berlin. Results: The ethnic composition of the city district is not mirrored in that of the course participants. Whichever their formal education, migrants are more than German course participants motivated on the personal level.
R. Jermann presents eduQua, a label that certifies certain basic standards for further education institutions in Switzerland. eduQua aims at securing and furthering the quality of further education institutions by way of the setting of basic standards, at identifying a basis for administrative decisions (certified institutions may apply for grants), and at improving transparence in the education market.
