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This article regards the publication of a text-foto-volume on the 100-year-history of the German Volkshochschule as an impulse for a possible innovation of writing history of adult education. First, the methodological principles of a both empirical and narrative historiography and its terminology will be described. Departing from a pragmatic moral intention of the book to present an affirmative history of the Volkshochschule, the article suggests a historical-normative historiography. Thereafte…
In this article, terms and the state of research on adult numeracy are compiled in a systematic way. The findings and theories are selected according to their relation to the German-language discourse of adult education and at the same time embedded in a historical context as well as in international discourse. Many recent findings confirm Jean Lave’s approach in that numeracy differs from school mathematics in the high relevance of rules of thumb and estimates as well as in less formal procedu…
Demographic change renders basic skills important at an increasingly older age. Among them, skills in financial matters are becoming increasingly rele- vant. The skills measured in PIAAC and CiLL represent comprehensive cognitive abilities which can be seen as the basis for successful participation in social and economic life. Based on a secondary analysis, this paper shows that financial prac- tices remain for older people, although their numeracy skills proficiency lower than those of younger…
