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.
During the last two decades, widening adult participation in higher education has become a central issue in international and especially European lifelong learning policy debates. At European level this is reflected in the Europe 2020 strategy set out by the European Commission. One headline target is to boost the share of the population aged 30–34 that has completed tertiary or equivalent education to 40 per cent by 2020. In the face of general trends such as the intensive use of ICT, the evol…
Unter dem Stichwort "Multimedialer Zugang zur Aus- und Weiterbildung in Europa" wurde die Initiative PROMETEUS entwickelt. Der Text gibt einen kurzen inhaltlichen Überblick über die Initiative.
The book provides educational institutions and those active in working with refugees with long-term, practically relevant knowledge, compiled by practitioners: Sound knowledge, didactic and methodical recommendations – and useful orientation for educational work for and with people with a flight background. The complex living conditions of refugees are characterised by key aspects, especially with regard to circumstances that affect their participation in the society of the country of desti…
This assumption does not seem plausible at first glance, but rather absurd instead. The regular manifestation of modern age as a knowledge-based society on the one hand as well as the consensual acceptance of the appeal for lifelong learning on the other hand, create the opposite of an image in which the pedagogical aspect of continuing education has been lost. The author argues that learners are increasingly left unsupported, lifelong learning has become more fiction than reality and continui…
Counselling: Changes for a Sustainable Development If counselling should survive as a generally accepted human service at the beginning of the 21st century, a fundamental shift in paradigms and the therewith connected development of sustainable offers for counselling becomes necessary. Permanent co-evolution of needs from clients, economy and society calls for specific skills and knowledge for analysis and coping with multiple subjective realities, ecological contexts, non-linear causalities…
Modern society has widely been characterized as an information society, in that the possession of information (or rather knowledge) is seen as the predominant factor for success. But information is volatile: the need to replace or update obsolete information becomes ever more pressing, as technological and scientific development moves on. This, however, happens in the context of a compartmentalization of society into a sector of successful, flexible individuals on the one hand and a sector of t…
Changing the focus on Natural Sciences At present, public debates postulate more attention to natural sciences in the education sector. First, we will examine the precarious status of natural sciences in adult education and than argue that the traditional focus on natural sciences need to be readjusted. This change of focus aims at a general understanding of scientific developments by which both the individual and the society as a whole will gain and maintain its capacity to judge and act on…
The rising importance of continuing education in the knowledge-based society is undisputed, but the broad organisational and legal area of continuing education has not been surveyed adequately to date in statistical terms. This article provides an overview of the heterogeneous landscape of providers and explains the existing data situation. Following this, the problems associated with a separation between providers of vocational from general education are discussed. Finally, the current changes…
Reshaping the Relationship between Natural Sciences and Society – The implicite Learning in Contemporary Society How much does an average citizen need to know in the field of natural sciences in order to cope with the challenges of contemporary society? This question is being asked from various points of view. We will reconstruct current debates related to this question along three different lines: on the European level, within academia, and by means of a concrete case study. By relating the…
Taking demographical development as a starting point, Turek identifies functions of political education. It should help to avoid the »clash of generations «. Demographical change, however, is only one of several trends: the change from modern industrial society towards a transnational technological society calls for a new »contract across generations«. Political education initialises a future-oriented selfremodelling of society and thus becomes an investment into its human resource…
