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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…
Hanft, Anke; Zentner, Tim: Qualification and personnel development – a competence gap in adult education institutions? Results of an empirical study on qualification of staff in adult education institutions The contribution analyses how adult education institutions and universities prepare their staff with education and training for changed structural requirements and reforms. In the centre are two studies of German state universities and public adult education institutions in the country N…
German universities have been compelled to live on a tight budget for years. Therefore, university financing is on the one hand concerned with more efficiency, on the other hand with the opening up new sources of income. Possible instruments for more efficiency are global budgets and the dividing-up of budgets according to indicators. New sources of income might be funded research and the provision of further education. But German universities are still a long way from being "entrepreneurial un…
Scientific adult learning discussions refer to the concept of “region” mainly in policy contexts. Against this background, the author develops an approach to investigate regions from an organizational point of view. In a qualitative interview study using grounded theory within the framework of action-centered geography, he shows that adult education organizations and professionals construct regions in pedagogical practice. These practices need to be analyzed as a complex interplay between marke…
One aim of the European Commission is to improve the number of graduates between 30 and 34 years to 40?% for 2020. This requirement provides the university with new material for the promotion of this target group. Current university didactic concepts, such as mentoring programs, can be used to address these challenges. The following article gives an overview of mentoring in higher education and reports on first experiences of participants in the mentoring program “MEwiSA” at the University of D…
Although trainers can be expected to be important for the success further of vocational education, there is no regulation of the qualification of trainers in Germany. A so-called train-the-trainer certificate often serves as proof of professionalism. The study describes the topics of those certificates and their frequencies. Therefore we looked at the programs of 47 providers in terms of a qualitative content analysis. The inductively generated category system contains 56 categories on three hi…
The study text points out relevant research criteria for an evaluation in the field of adult education. For that purpose, basic concepts and theories are discussed and objectives, tasks, and principles of evaluation are outlined. The author refers to classic targets of evaluation – teaching/learning processes, educational institutions, projects/programmes as well as the education system – to present the features of adult education evaluation. In this context, the issue of required object-relate…
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…
This article, which emanates from the KLASSIC project funded by the Federal German Ministry for Education and Research, explores whether the conveyance of metacognitive techniques effectively boost confidence in one’s own learning effort, thus helping escape the vicious cycle of expectations of failure and failure itself (in this case: older adults in everyday settings void of problems). The empirical study shows that tools such as self-surveys, paired problem-solving, learning diaries or portf…
How to relate Natural Sciences to Adult Education Drawing on an intensive debate on the improvement of scientific literacy going on in Germany for more than ten years, this article deals with possible contributions of adult education. Starting with the marginal supply of science courses for adults, I focus on typical didactical arrangements and concepts. Based on an empirical study, exemplary didactical concepts are analysed regarding aims, topics, course type, and audience. The results are…
