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The article presents findings of an ethnographical research project concerning the international concept of literacy as social practice. In this project, literacy was analyzed from an individual and a public point of view, focusing on its multidimensional uses and purposes in everyday life. Referring to a broader understanding of literacy as social practice, the study aims at initiating a discussion concerning the purpose and use of literacy among adult educators and practitioners in literacy c…
Transformations in German adult and continuing education (ACE) are discussed in their relation to more far-reaching transformations in society concerning the ways in which knowledge and non-knowledge are processed. Some features of the discourse related to the notion of „knowledge society“ as well as empirical findings on the general spreading of knowledge transfer activities are pointed out, before three instances of change in ACE are discussed. While issues of transferring knowledge appear to…
“Bildung” and Biography in Self-organized Learning If subjects of learning are related to the learners thinking and acting in past or future, learning gains a biographic dimension. The notion of “bildung” can be attributed to a learning process, when frames of interpretation get transformed and re-arranged. The councelling of learning in a learning environment opens spaces, where learning processes like this can come true. This interrelation is examined in the contribution with an analysis o…
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…
Untersuchungen zu Rolle und Wirkung der Bezugswissenschaften auf die Erwachsenenbildung, gestützt auf anthropologische und biographische Forschungsaspekte, psychologische Perspektiven und Sozialforschung.
The Need for Comparative Research on the History of Adult Education and its Challenges Research on the history of adult education has been established as a sub-discipline of adult educational science – however, mainly in a national context. Even nowadays comparative research on the history of adult education is still a step-child of research, facing major challenges which are consequently also problems of presentation.
Ist die gesellschaftliche Teilhabe behinderter Menschen durch Bildung schon verwirklicht, und wenn ja, wie weit? Dies ist eine Hauptfragestellung der Ausgabe 4/2003, das anlässlich des „Europäischen Jahres der Menschen mit Behinderungen“ erschienen ist. Im Gespräch mit Dr. Peter Radtke – Schauspieler, Geschäftsführer der „AG Behinderung und Medien e.V.“, ehem. VHS-Fachgebietsleiter und selber durch die Glasknochenkrankheit behindert – geht es u.a. um die Zielgruppe „Behinderte“ in der Erwachsen…
This article provides an overview of the debate on learning environments and learning locations within adult education research; the authors use a historical review of main research topics in order to understand current learning environments and recent theoretical and empirical discussions. The term of learning environments or learning locations has been introduced into research on adult education in the 1970ies; since this time, each following decade can be characterized by several specific re…
