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.
Proceeding from the educational policy objective of achieving greater participation in continuing education, this article presents a set of instruments with which the learning and educational behaviour of adults can be measured statistically. Taking the example of data selected from the Continuing Education Reporting System (Berichtssystem Weiterbildung (BSW)) and the Adult Education Survey (AES), the potential for analysis and the generation of knowledge offered by statistics on continuing edu…
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…
How can continuing education in actual practice really use empirical data on the area of continuing education? The author, a business manager at an adult college special-purpose association, demonstrates in his article the practical potential offered by empirical educational research. The data generated serve as a comparative parameter for local statistics and can help identify and corroborate fields of development. He elucidates this using the examples of milieu marketing and course leader qua…
The report focuses on empirical data of cultural life from a cultural political perspective. Despite the common experience of growth, a significant increase of cultural life participation cannot be empirically verified with regard to the time budgets applied – at least not of provisions attributed to the narrower definition of culture. There are more visits (especially of large cultural institutions and popular cultural events) but not necessarily more visitors. While the prerequisites for cult…
The report contributes statements by educational counsellors indicating their self-expectations and objectives and their attempt to obtain a high beneficial level of counselling in continuing education. At the same time, the ratio of the competences of counselling personnel in continuing education to their self-defined objectives is observed. This qualitative empiricism backs the analysis of the location of continuing educational counselling as a location in the triangle between public expectat…
