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This article investigates the internationally-comparative question how basic education policy is understood at the national level of policy formulation (policy), and how this basic education policy is – taking into account the institutional rules and responsibilities of the multi-level-system (polity) – implemented by a constellation of actors into national education policy (politics). On the basis of empirical data from the project “EU-Alpha”, the interplay of policy, polity and politics in ba…
This paper draws on three data sources – a national survey from Germany of adult literacy and numeracy skills (leo. – Level-One Study), the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC), and case studies of workplaces in England – to argue for a greater focus by policymakers and researchers on the literacy demand experienced by adults. We consider the heterogeneity of the population of adults deemed functionally illiterate by large-scale national and internatio…
Adult education increasingly occupies the center of education policy and hence the corresponding governance aspirations on the national, supra- and international level. Large-scale-assessment studies, like PIAAC, further raised public attention for adult education with a focus on the low educated. This study analyzes overall and spatial participation in adult education in the national context using multi-level modeling. Using data from the European Labour Force Survey 2013 it shows that (1) the…
The article focuses the question whether workforce literacy strategies in research and policies may tend to exclude relevant fields of literacy, which have emancipatory chances for participants, but which regularly fail in including low qualified or literate adults, namely the area of basic civic education. The relevance of basic civic education will be discussed using contemporary theories, which point at a crisis of democracy and explain this by the spread of income and capital and its legiti…
This contribution deals with the definition of adult basic education and its entanglement with interests and power relations in the field of public education administration of the German Laender. As the New Literacy Studies view literacy as a social practice that is related to interests and power relations, guided interviews concerning the definition of adult basic education as well as legitimising rationales from the perspective of education administration were illustrated. The interviews are …
So far in the field of continuing education research the management concept is and has been primarily focused. Therefore the research is still centred on directing structures and objective processes. Thus, this article concentrates on leadership, i.?e. the superior’s intended influence on the coordination of organisation members. Based on a contrastive case comparison, it analyses the enhancement of hierarchical and non-hierarchical forms of action coordination triggered by the superior’s leade…
The JDC (Defence and Citizenship Day) has become an essential element in the fight against illiteracy in France. It not only furnishes annual statistics for national, regional and local policy evaluation, but also identifies those young adults within a entire cohort (mostly 17–19) who need help with their literacy skills, so that they can be referred to by support organisations. It is difficult to assess very precisely the impact of post-JDC actions carried out by JDC partners. Neither the JDC…
