Research
We explore how adult education can be made inclusive, digital and effective.
Services
Digital tools, specialist portals and data – for teachers, researchers, students and interested parties.
Institute
We offer research, transfer and infrastructure for lifelong learning.
Striking the Balance between Competences – Backgrounds, Methods, Development Necessities The term competence entered the pedagogical/educational discussions of the German Education Council in the 1970s. However, it has recently become, once again, the objective of an intensive debate. It is always about the potential of the individuals which exceeds the certified level of knowledge and skills. This article introduces and analyses three different methodological approaches to the evaluation an…
Starting from constructivist, neurophysiologic and learning psychological deliberations the actual learning place should be described as the human being because only within him is where the learning takes place. Unanimously though, learning is always carried out in interaction with contextual factors. The outer environment – and therewith also local conditions – influence the processing of information. Hereunto three examples are named: (1) The Loci method links memory contents with places. (2)…
Learning behaviour and milieu as central dimensions at the analysis of the life-long learning process Based on the empirical qualitative research project on "Biography and Learning Behaviour", in which the influence of the generation threshold established knowledge and the origin milieu of dockyard workers in Rostock with which the biographical processing of the societal transformation processes in the former DDR were examined, the following facets are made a subject of discussion. Prefacing…
This paper brings into focus the discourse on competences and reviews critically the potential of large-scale assessments. The measurement of competences in adulthood is a step towards a deeper understanding of the development of competences during the life course, although only domain specific and not general competences are taken into consideration. Based on the current research, the debate on competences will be reflected and the central points in the field of modeling the constructs of skil…
Continuing Education Participation – Current State of Research and Ascertainment of the Subject-Matter Who for whatever reason, participates in continuing education is one of the core questions of continuing education research and practice. Referring to two texts by Horst Siebert and Johannes Weinberg, reflections are made on what knowledge participation research has generated since the so called pilot studies of the 1960s and 1970s. At the same time, socio-demographic and occupational-rela…
Vocational adult education research Data situation, research questions and selected results Likewise the meaning of adult education the number of reseach works with this theme increase. Prerequisite for interpretation and classification of the present results of adult education research is the knowledge of the underlying sources of data and information. The text at hand gives an overview of the data situation in the area of vocational adult education whereas it features also company ques…
AiKomPass is a web-based tool to make informal and non-formal competences within the electrical and metal industries visible. It is based on an interview study with potential users and a task inventory, which covers tasks of work areas like process planning, production, maintenance and logistics within production processes. The tool itself was developed within a participative design process. It enables employees and people in search of employment to self-assess their ability to fulfil working t…
Programs of further education reflect societal interpretations of education and are the result of professional pedagogical action. Research on programs of further education and on the underlying planning processes is educational research that reconstructs educational concepts in a phenomenological manner and that provides a knowledge base for decisions that need to be negotiated by society. In this context, program-planning models constitute partial perspectives on program planning. One goal of…
On the long journey to a Benefit Contributive Scientific Didactics Horst Siebert and Johannes Weinberg’s texts on didactic issues of adult education which will be looked at closely, cover almost the whole publication period of REPORT. Against this background, the author addresses the question of what contributions the selected texts and, thus the journal itself, made to the development of adult education science and which discussions within the discipline are to be found in it. The author p…
The article focuses on guidance in adult education as a type of institutional talk. Multiple data sources were collected through a comparative case study of two providers to examine how the institutional contexts influenced the guidance. On the one hand the providers define the subjects of their guidance service and their selection of consultants is based on the content knowledge. Also the providers pursue institutional goals with their guidances. On the other hand the guidance-seekers have the…