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The author points out the cultural technique of reading and writing, which enables humans to organise the thoughts, to concentrate and activate the imagination: Thus, reading and writing are much more than the mere dissemination of information and cannot be replaced by any technology.
Based on several contemporary international impulses on national educational policy, the article discusses the interaction of management and educational research, particularly indicator-aided educational reporting. First, the author scans the relevance and weaknesses of international interventions. In the light of national self-determination of educational issues, he stresses the significance of national educational reporting as well as the consideration of federal structure and regional levels…
The report examines the transferability of Howard Gardner’s approach »Five Minds for the Future« to the field of continuing education. Along the »Five Minds«, he points out their significance as a plea for holistic education. Thus, future-oriented education does not impart a definite canon of knowledge but a positive preservation of learning. This pretence is transferable to continuing educational institutions which already include various holistic topics and forms of learning in their programm…
Educational training frameworks constitute an intervention in the context of strategies of the European Space for Lifelong Learning. It poses critical questions regarding the consistency of initiatives seeking to create transparency of activities, skills and qualifications in different fields of policy independently of one another.
This article explores the inherent normative nature of what on the surface appears to be neutral empirical research. Direct and indirect normative influences exercised by empirical research are demonstrated using the example of the PISA studies: (1) their desire to provide knowledge which can help steer policy, (2) the normative nature of their didactical concepts and educational theory, (3) the idea derived from the sequence of studies of adapting classroom instruction to conform with the conc…
In this article the theory and practice of adult education are described as a system which sustains itself using certain rules of play. The author starts out with an introduction to the term »play/game« placing particular emphasis on the fact that this game sets off further acts of communication: further moves are made. Next, four dimensions are identified in which ways of playing games can be observed: the personal, the social, the organisational and the community dimension. Adult education is…
An idyll of inclusion and exclusion? The article brings into question the ongoing debate about inclusion/exclusion. For this purpose it draws attention to the circularity of the used arguments being composed of democracy – social inclusion – education. Hence, the paper is aimed at discussing the interdependence of these components, focussing in particular on the ambivalent position of adult/further education in this dynamic. The reference to the work of Jacques Rancière, an influential Frenc…
Traumatisation and national emergency semantics. Continuities in educational policy from Sputnik to the PISA shock The successful launch of the Soviet satellite “Sputnik” in the autumn of 1957 had a lasting impact on u.S. educational policy: expenditures on education and science skyrocketed in order to keep up in the technol-ogy race with the Soviet union. this article explores the conditions in which the launch of a satellite led to a profound shock while at the same time analysing the sema…
The B.A./M.A. nonsense. A backtalk The polemic against the university reform begins at its claim of absoluteness and the derivation of a “diploma prohibition” of the Bologna process. The educational politics is being assumed to have introduced the bachelor and master for financial reasons. The author captures 15 theses on the damage, which the university reform brings. Among others: 1. B.A. and M.A. are extending the time of study. 2. The B.A. destroys university places. 3. The B.A. does not q…