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The article analyses the linkage between the age of participants of continuing education and the function which learners appoint to their participation. Therefore, the influence of the subjective age for further education is studied. The study differentiates professional, social and personal functions of participation in continuing education. The result of a factor analysis designs subjective age into the two constructs cognitive and social-psychological subjective age. The data of two survey s…
The paper raises the question of how inclusion, in the sense of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, is operationalized in institutional learning settings for adults. It presents findings of a qualitative pilot study. Based on a relational theory of space, the findings elicit a conceptual model of the architecture of inclusion at public places of learning for adults. The model illuminates the way social space is constituted in and by the actions of professionals, and th…
Within the field of adult education/continuing education the topic counselling occupies a central role. This concerns the theoretical discourses as well as the different types of offers. This study book situates the topic counselling in its pedagogical reference framework and provides central lines of development and differentiation. These include questions about the interaction, the forms of action and the conditions of good consultation. Moreover different forms of educational guidance are ou…
The B.A./M.A. nonsense. A backtalk The polemic against the university reform begins at its claim of absoluteness and the derivation of a “diploma prohibition” of the Bologna process. The educational politics is being assumed to have introduced the bachelor and master for financial reasons. The author captures 15 theses on the damage, which the university reform brings. Among others: 1. B.A. and M.A. are extending the time of study. 2. The B.A. destroys university places. 3. The B.A. does not q…
In addition to (in-)formal organisational structures, the perspectives and actions of the management and its influence are central to the coordination of organizational members. How management shapes this task, however, is so far hardly attributed to institutional influences of the organisational environment. Against this background, this book explores in a contrastive case study from a neo-institutionalist point of view how the action-guiding sense of leadership of managers in adult education …
This study starts from a dilemma which has been observed in adult basic education. On the one hand the use of assessments is regarded as supportive in order to determine in detail the learning needs of adults. On the other hand it is to be expected that persons with experiences of performing inadequately show justified anxieties or resistances in connection with test situations. I have chosen a research approach, which follows Holzkamp’s concept of a subject-scientific learning theory (1995), b…
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. …
AiKomPass is a web-based tool to make informal and non-formal competences within the electrical and metal industries visible. It is based on an interview study with potential users and a task inventory, which covers tasks of work areas like process planning, production, maintenance and logistics within production processes. The tool itself was developed within a participative design process. It enables employees and people in search of employment to self-assess their ability to fulfil working t…
Initial results of the Level One Survey Germany (leo.) show that functional illiteracy affects 14.5 percent of working-age population (18–64 years of age). This translates into 7.5 million people who lack functional literacy skills in Germany. We will first introduce the method and design of the study. We will then explain the decisions taken in order to obtain the estimate of the dimension of functional illiteracy. These decisions were carefully taken, and they have contributed to a rather con…
The article focuses on guidance in adult education as a type of institutional talk. Multiple data sources were collected through a comparative case study of two providers to examine how the institutional contexts influenced the guidance. On the one hand the providers define the subjects of their guidance service and their selection of consultants is based on the content knowledge. Also the providers pursue institutional goals with their guidances. On the other hand the guidance-seekers have the…
