Research
We explore how adult education can be made inclusive, digital and effective.
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Digital tools, specialist portals and data – for teachers, researchers, students and interested parties.
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We offer research, transfer and infrastructure for lifelong learning.
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…
This article presents the results of a recent online survey of graduates of the Austrian Academy of Continuing Education. Methodically, the survey’s results on benefit items are interpreted and answers to open questions are analyzed by qualitative content analyses. Empirical findings are subject to an interpretation using concepts of professionalization and the political agenda of validation of informal and non-formal learning. An important finding is, that WBA enhances individual professionali…
The article analyses the linkage between the age of participants of continuing education and the function which learners appoint to their participation. Therefore, the influence of the subjective age for further education is studied. The study differentiates professional, social and personal functions of participation in continuing education. The result of a factor analysis designs subjective age into the two constructs cognitive and social-psychological subjective age. The data of two survey s…
Lifelong education for seniors is becoming a significant policy focus because of factors relating to the global aging society phenomenon. Yet the modern ‘educational demoralisation’ that can result from informal experiential learning not being sufficiently valued or encouraged, may also apply to later life learning—typically manifest as a ‘fear of ageing’ as well as ageism. This is especially so in contexts where policymakers tend to just mainly focus on the worrying economic, health and other …
Within the framework of a four-year project (2015-2018) supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research and des ESF, among others, the competencies and the orientations guiding the practice of validation personnel in adult education are inquired. While most of the existing research concentrates on competency validation arrangements and instruments, the present research uses a qualitative research design to look at the actors and their practice from the perspective …
The article focuses on reflexive competencies, their importance in the context of adult educational professionalization and professionalism, and their embedding in existing procedures for the validation of competencies. Reflexive competencies are a key component of adult educational professionalism. Their recognition and certification, however, is particularly challenging because it cannot be based on detailed descriptions of these competencies. Therefore, it will be examined how the recognitio…
Over the past 15 years, a variety of approaches have been developed in (adult) education contexts to validate formal, non-formal and informal competences and thus harness them for lifelong learning purposes. Despite the development, testing and evaluation of appropriate procedures as well as process-accompanying research and procedural clarification processes, a nationwide implementation can not be observed. It can be deduced from these findings that the low degree of implementation of correspo…
Auf Initiative der Europäischen Union sollen bis zum Jahr 2018 kohärente Verfahren zur Anerkennung von Kompetenzen entwickelt werden. In der Erwachsenen- und Weiterbildung konzentriert sich hier die Diskussion auf nicht zertifizierte Kompetenzen, die non-formal und informell erworben wurden. Konventionelle Instrumente aus Psychologie und Testtheorie stoßen bei deren Erfassung schnell an ihre Grenzen. In dieser Ausgabe stellen wir die Frage, wie Anerkennung und Validierung in erwachsenen-p…