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Professionalization in Europe This contribution deals with the state of professionalization in adult education on the level of single member states in the European Union. Concerning this the DIE has brought into being a research group, in which further education researchers from Sweden, Denmark, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Italy, France and Portugal are represented. The inputs for the constituent assembly of the research group and the first discussions of the initia…
Decision behaviour in further education, impact on pedagogical consulting competence The author shows, that against the background of accruing research on adult education consultation the relevance of emotions for the decision behaviour of adults is drawn closer into the focus. For this she introduces first partial results of a running research project.
Learning a language is an indispensable prerequisite for participating in both public and working life. Adult education, also in Germany, is currently facing a great challenge in the area of language teaching: In addition to language teaching for migrants and refugees, a key problem is the alphabetization of German and non-German speaking functional illiterates. This paper looks at the conditions for successful language learning by the adults here in focus in organized teaching and learning set…
The article provides a systematizing overview of contemporary methodological approaches and results of research on guidance and counselling. As well qualitative as quantitative approaches will be explored and concerning its insight located. Different but also complementary findings become visible. At the end, it will be argued in favour of a further elaboration of research on guidance and counselling in adult education. Therefore, it should be looked for a mutual relation between studies and a …
The perspective of administrational staff in educational organizations is barely in focus in adult education research. This paper reacts on this desideratum of research and tries to answer the following question: How does the administrational staff of Adult education organizations perceive the collaboration with the pedagogical staff? This question is answered within a qualitative research design. Therefore, the existing data of a qualitative study concerning cultures of teaching in adult educa…
This article proposes two interpretational approaches which sociological transformation research offers to reflect on east German transformation processes after reunification. (1) Taking the concept of transformation as modernisation catching up, a picture is painted of a society going through inevitable modernisation processes with a time delay. (2) From the theoretical perspective of contextualisation, transformation is seen as an objectless, complex, conflict-prone process during which easte…
Scientific guidance as empirical research and consultancy Scientific guidance as a self-evident component of adult education stands in area of tension of empirical research and consultancy. This tension ratio can be dissolved when one dissolves scientific guidance in two phases, one survey phase and a consultancy phase, which are then defined as different situations of adult education.
Strata, Class, Milieu. Reference strategies in research on continuing education 1957-2007 The author provides a longitudinal look at 50 years of research on participation in continuing education. After presenting some important publications from 1957 (Schelsky, Dahrendorf), he presents sociological reference strategies which were used in the respective time periods to explain the social structure: first strata and class, and then later – due to the influence of Bourdieus – the social milieu: H…
The author describes and evaluates actual streamings of men’s studies at the background – and as a result – of the history and development of women’s studies. Ursula Müller’s main questions are: How is gender construction defined by men’s studies? Is it critical research in the sense of social criticism and self reflection? Her answer: It depends on the author. The position of Ursula Müller is grounding on the concept of Robert W. Connell’s plaedoyer for taking serious men as a specific social …
From 2002 on the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) will be sponsoring 80 regional networks in the context of the „Learning Regions – promotion of networks“ programme. This programme will be scientifically monitored by a consortium formed by the German Institute of Adult Education (DIE), the German Institute of Economic Research (DIW), and the universities of Duisburg and Munich. The author will be in charge of the overall scientific supervision. In his article he pres…
