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.
In the context of lifelong learning, the validation of prior learning has become a contested topic. Views differ about whether procedures should be oriented to (work) requirements – verifying that people match a defined competence profile – or be designed to support people in their personal development. In the latter case, the procedures mainly involve self-evaluation while in the first case they are concerned with external evaluation. In this paper a validation procedure is analysed that inclu…
Learning behaviour and milieu as central dimensions at the analysis of the life-long learning process Based on the empirical qualitative research project on "Biography and Learning Behaviour", in which the influence of the generation threshold established knowledge and the origin milieu of dockyard workers in Rostock with which the biographical processing of the societal transformation processes in the former DDR were examined, the following facets are made a subject of discussion. Prefacing…
Development of culinary competencies. »Food Literacy« as a horizontal task for adult education Nourishment relevant theoretical knowledge and practical skills in preparing dishes are more and more decreasing. At the same time the requirements towards the personal feeding competence are increasing: the variety of offers continuously demands decisions and a time budget for nourishment from the consumer – these become smaller in competition to work times and media using times. The contribution i…
The economy of education identifies various kinds of usefulness of education: individual benefits and also so-called external benefits, by which society profits (internal as well as external benefits can be monetary or non-monetary). These dimensions of usefulness differ in the degree to which they can be quantified. The benefits of education have not been researched as thoroughly as its cost. The more far-reaching welfare effects of further education are especially hard to measure. The evalu…
The argument in this article is based on a concept that defines values as ‘big principles’. Although the work of education institutions is based on values in that sense, it cannot guarantee those values itself. That is why it is important to not only raise an awareness of values in internal debates among adult educators but also to speak about them explicitly in the classroom. The author believes that pursuing these two strategies makes more sense than formulating a specific ‘ethics of continui…
This article sums up development cooperation in adult education, providing information about the fields in which this cooperation takes place, which funds it uses and which professionals are involved. When it comes to the question of how German adult education exports have affected transitional countries, the spotlight is on evaluation. The authors ascertain that evaluation work has reached different stages in different educational fields. In the sector of vocational education cooperation the f…
Constructive approaches to the EQF and DQR - Basic and advanced certificate model for further education teachers This article presents a specific qualifications framework for the sector of further education, consisting of a two-stage model (basic and advanced certificates). This touches on the discussion about the EQF and DQR as a motivation and opportunity for the professionalisation of further education. The model takes up examples from Austria and Switzerland and is aligned toward prelimi…
Statistische Weiterbildungsdaten können eine gute Grundlage der Steuerung und Entwicklung von Weiterbildung sein – auf politischen Bühnen wie auch vor Ort in den Einrichtungen. Vor 50 Jahren hat man mit der systematischen datengestützten Beobachtung des Weiterbildungshandelns begonnen, als die erste Folge der Volkshochschul-Statistik erschien. Daran erinnert dieses Heft. Im Blick auf Potenzial, Perspektiven und Grenzen des Weiterbildungs-Monitorings zeigt sich: Statistiken aus Trägerperspektive…
