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In Germany, participation in continuing education has been on a respectable level since 2012. In 2016, 50 per cent of all adults were active in continuing education and training. Based on these findings, the Adult Education Survey (AES) 2016 provides numerous detailed results, which are presented in the final evaluation report. The authors of this report analyse and comment the representative data with regard to key issues, such as: Who are the participants of continuing education and for what …
Political Education has a long tradition in Austrian adult education. In the period of the Second Republic, ist is cinsidered marginalized. A closer look puts this assumption into perspective. Political education is widely party-centered and present in large-scale organizations such as the Federation of Trade Unions. There is a wide and confusing institutional landscape. With a few exeptions, political education is marginalized within traditional adult education such as the peoples universities…
In international comparative analyses on further education the clustering of countries is widely established. Frequently, such typologies are derived heuristically, referring to theoretical approaches or single indicators, which make it difficult to obtain a systematic overview. This contribution presents the main arguments of two theoretical approaches (welfare state regimes Esping-Andersen 1990 and varieties of capitalism Hall/Soskice 2001) that refer to indicators on the macro level for expl…
It is widely acknowledged that adult education is a moral enterprise in many respects. There is a demand for empirical research on which groups of actors are dealing with professional ethical issues and which specific ethical problems arise in adult education practice. The authors analyze ethical standards and policies of adult education associations in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Based on the outcomes of this analysis, they present a proposal on how a discourse on ethical standards in ad…
This paper deals with a new approach in the promotion of literacy, which focuses on social integration. This approach has been inspired by a concept of adult education aiming at integration and by social work oriented to the life world of the addressees. These concepts are being adapted to the work with functionally illiterate persons. The approach discussed here includes different forms of action promoting literacy: both learning and consulting, and also institutional cooperation in networks. …
The ways in which computer games can affect learning are identified using the example of games for fun, starting out with the aspect of research into learning and teaching theory. Approaches used in behaviourism, cognitivism and individual and social constructivism are compared. In the psychology of emotions, activating and deactivating emotions are distinguished with regard to their learning effect. From the point of view of the psychology of motivation, special emphasis is placed on the self-…
Serving oneself. The new voluntary work and the role of full-time educationalists People’s own learning and development motives play a more important role in the “new voluntary work” than before. This article relates subjective descriptions by volunteers of the learning motives underlying their commitments and adopts a profession-oriented theoretical perspective to relate these to a strategy of support for volunteers by full-time educationalists, referred to as learning and development supp…
The notion of lifelong learning is reshaping the structural principle according to which learning is organised in the time structures of society. Long periods of time spent in schools are becoming more flexible, with shorter sections of ordered learning times being distributed throughout people’s lives and more flexible transitions taking place between work and learning. The three-phase scheme for working life – training, work and retirement – is becoming more flexible. The LLL concept can be s…
Experience cannot be synthesised – it needs time. This aspect moves to the centre of attention when educational training time is not examined from the perspective of its exploitation, but rather in terms of its enablement. This article conceives of adults’ educational time as a qualitative factor whose content requires structuring. The structure of educational training time is at the same time viewed as a deceleration factor. Deceleration is not understood here to mean passive non-activity, but…
“The Ideal World of the Bildungbürger and Rural “Borderline Experiences” Programmes of German adult education centres in 1957 In this article course programmes of German adult education centres in 1957 are examined from the perspectives of four time-witnesses of German social history during the Cold War: (1) What memories are stimulated among time-witnesses as to what the courses were really like? (2) What approach is used in the cover text? (3) What differences can one find when comparing th…
