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From 1992 to 2007 a considerable amount of German and EU funding was put into development projects described as “Qualification Development Management” (German acronym: QUEM) and aimed to support the quality of vocational qualification structures in the former GDR. QUEM was sponsored by the ABWF (Study Group for Corporate Continuing Education Research). In this article the author, a scientist working on QUEM, sums up the activities in the programmes and projects which were funded. He identifies …
The article presents the results of a DFG project on program planning of workplace learning, which was conducted between June 2013 and May 2015 at the Department of Adult Education/Continuing Education at the Humboldt University of Berlin. The central questions were: a) How do internal and external stakeholders influence the program planning and training design in the context of workplace learning (targeted audiences, objectives, contents, didactic fields of action)? b) Which specific forms of …
Teachers and trainers can only act on what they notice. In line with use-inspired basic research, the question pursued in this book is how teachers’ and trainers’ competence to perceive, analyze, and diagnose situations of learning and instruction can be enhanced resulting in long-term effects. The present state of research with regard to adult education science’s professionalization discourse, teacher education research, competence as well as expertise research is drawn upon in order to gain a…
There is growing interest in evidence-based interventions that can improve student teachers’ professional development. But how can these interventions be implemented into everyday teacher education practice by teacher educators themselves—without losing their initial, lab-tested effectiveness due to teacher educators’ practical educational autonomy? Through a quasi-experimental field study the following question is investigated: What is the impact of different degrees of educational autonomy…
It becomes apparent in the current critique on methods of competence diagnostics that the problem does not lie in empirical or methodical, but mainly in theoretical deficits. Psycho-dynamic explanations are missing. Moreover, competences are mainly constructed as individual traits while social dimensions are ignored. Both deficits are considerable blank spaces. This paper argues that competence cannot be the cause of performance, but only the conscious notion of how masterly ways of acting look…
This article focuses on the requirement for teachers and trainers in adult education to reflect on their professional actions and teaching experiences. After a short overview of the current debate on professionalism, a definition of the term didactical reflection is elaborated, differentiating between two levels of reflection: on one hand a direct didactical reflection on teaching actions or situations and on the other hand a self-including reflection. Subjective definitions of successful teach…
This article, which emanates from the KLASSIC project funded by the Federal German Ministry for Education and Research, explores whether the conveyance of metacognitive techniques effectively boost confidence in one’s own learning effort, thus helping escape the vicious cycle of expectations of failure and failure itself (in this case: older adults in everyday settings void of problems). The empirical study shows that tools such as self-surveys, paired problem-solving, learning diaries or portf…
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 didactical gap in the “didactical self choice” In adult education didactics are closely conglomerated with learn theoretical concepts without clearly naming its own questions in content. This becomes especially obvious in the newly research on e-learning. After the failure of the technically possible, the call for didactics has become loud. When one regards the pertinent publications, one finds remarkably many which take their didactical foundation from the learn theory and therewith ha…
Küchler, Felicitas von: Trials of innovation and development of the pedagogical professionality of the consultancy system The central terms of the framegiving political education programme are presented. Scetched are the the implicit requirements of the innovation consultancy as well as the principles of work that were developed during the concept of the scientific councelling for the support of the innovation consultancy. With the background of the current social scientific professional co…
