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.
Further education is regarded as an investment in the future, in which large parts of the population of Germany participate. However not all groups benefit from this investment in equal measure. The contribution particularly focuses on the further education situation of migrants. A subsequent subscription of the development of pedagogical concepts of deficit- and adaption orientated basic approaches from the early 1970s up to the current stronger resource- and integration orientated offers. The…
Interest and Learning This article presents an overview of the so-called educational-psychological theory of interest and demonstrates its relevance for the processes and results of learning. Following this theoretical approach, interest behaviour can be described as a relation between person and object. It is accompanied by self-determination, positive emotions and a strong personal relation to certain objects or actions. Advantages of interest-motivated learning appear in improving cogniti…
The atmosphere of adult pedagogy (Re-) discovery of a central didactical category Even though every teacher would give the pedagogical atmosphere a central meaning for the progression of the learning activity, the marginal theoretical capture of this phenomenon in adult pedagogic is astonishing. A look over the edge of a plate makes it clear, that general pedagogy, philosophy and psychology has already come to interesting cognitions. Against this background, the aim of the contribution is …
The contribution reports central thoughts of the American psychologist Csikszentmihalyi from the book “FLOW“, and it sharpens the statements on the reality of learners and teachers. “Flow“ stands for the “optimum experience“. Therewith Csikszentmihalyi indicates a feeling of high spirits, of deeply felt joy that lasts long and that occurs when body and soul of a person is strained to limits in the voluntary endeavour to achieve something difficult and something valuable. In this condition, orde…
When gender meets didactics… Learning and teaching in context of social constructions This contribution combines didactical and gender-related deliberations and sketches the emphases of the respective discourses. It uses the constructive character of gender in order to take the constructivistically orientated didactics at its word. With the experiences of a model event, didactical steps are presented exemplary which are able to meet the requirements of the special reference between gender a…
The competence concept of PISA and IALS New impulses for adult education through international comparative studies In the contribution the literacy concept, which is new to the German education discussion, and some of the results of IALS are presented, whereas parallels but also differences are shown to the PISA study. The causales for the central result of the missing basic competences are questioned, whereas clues are given to contexts between antiquated teaching methods and often lament…
Thriller series with top class actors of the German television occasionally play teachers and learners in adult education settings. And they use the cliche of the organised adult education as a place for problematic customized services. The author watched several different thriller series and advises to take note of the transported image in a sober way: teachers and learners of adult education will have to live with being portrayed in television thrillers as fogy or suspect figures. At the same…
Within the bounds of constitutional law, the Federal Government has educational-political powers concerning educational contents. These it exercises in manifold programmes and initiatives, among others in the area of further education. Veronika Pahl, head of the competent department in the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) gives a summar y of the most important initiatives along with the political considerations that form their background. Quality problems are grouped in categor…
„Language, language and nothing but language“ has been the motto of Dutch integration politics since the nineties. The „minority model“ practised before had been put out of use because it emptied the cash boxes and tired out the intrinsic initiative of the minorities. Since 1998, the „Law on the Naturalization of Newcomers“ regulates the educational programme for immigrants, namely, language and general orientation courses, as they are now being introduced in Germany as well. But the Dutch mode…
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 …