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.
The Future Workshop was originally developed for citizen groups with limited resources who wanted a say in the decision making process. It is a technique meant to shed light on a common problematic situation, to generate visions about the future, and to discuss how these visions can be realised. The paper describes the origin of the method. The methodological steps (phases) of the method are explained and in the second part there is a discussion of the strengths and weakness of the approach gu…
The "Blue Series" is the DIE's most traditional series of books. It is aimed at researchers and students of adult education as well as academically interested practitioners. Scientific papers on a theoretical and empirical base provide access to adult education research and enhance the transfer of knowledge between practice and research. Over the past 30 years, it contributed significantly to the discipline of adult education.
Due to the ongoing process of globalization, the need for trainings for intercultural competences increases. The study aims to measure the meaningfulness of intercultural training without additional coaching. Therefore, it assessed the level of intercultural competence of participants with and without an intercultural training in a cross-sectional study design. The results show that trainings actually have a positive effect on intercultural competence. Thereby, younger participants profit more …
Research on learning of distance learners An empirical insight into the practice of distance learning Albeit the high relevance of distance education and distance studies in the field of lifelong learning strategies, there is only few knowledge on the actual process in which the distant student learns. This article presents and discusses the results of a research project, in which distance students filled in questionnaires concerning their learning several times a week over a period of thre…
Keeping an eye on the practice of management in further education institutions, the observer will encounter a rich variety of changing management strategies. Johannes Hartkemeyer, himself director of a Volkshochschule, scrutinizes past crazes and sets up guidelines for dealing with ever-changing fashions on the one hand, and organisational development on the other hand. His advice is to be a »learning organisation«, watch out for »mental models« of the organisation in a permanent process of ref…
In order to reach real equality of men and women it is necessary to substitute not only women but also men and fathers in their role as an “active” father in family, society and professional life. The article describes education of fathers as a relatively new form of adult and further education focusing the consequences of social change processes and orientating by biographical transitions as there are pregnancy, bir th preparation, to be familiar with the role of parents, separation and di…
Teaching and learning situations are only super ficially described as transfer of knowledge. Beneath that surface complex processes of understanding influence the teacher-learner as well as the learner-learner interaction. Learners bring previous knowledge, experiences and attitudes into the classroom which may facilitate but also inhibit learning; they are not usually invited to express their beliefs, doubts and expectations and make them part of their individual learning prcoesses. The author…
Currently a dilemma within organization studies seems to be represented by, on the one hand, proponents who argue for a retro-wave, to go back to the original ideas of organization studies, the core tasks of enterprises and importance of the relevance of organization studies to practitioners. On the other hand, another contemporary movement may be observed within organization studies, which is to defend the use of general theories of the social sciences. This latter trend is represented through…
Continuing education at schools of higher learning – data on developments in the context of the Bologna process Wide-ranging, different and at the same time diverging factors are having an impact on schools of higher learning, causing uncertainty among staff as well as institutional insecurity. This also goes for scholarly continuing education. In general it would appear that there is a trend towards commercialisation of universities linked with a growing autonomy of sub-units, faculties and…
Theme networks and the systematic generation of the new A systematization using the example of the learning regions Meta structures in the form of content orientated “topic net groups” offers a possibility for communication and exchange between the regional projects in the program “Learning Regions – Providing Support for Networks”. Thereby they build a field of communication in which practice problems and their solutions appear and therefore they can be brought to discussion. Thus topic n…
