Research
We explore how adult education can be made inclusive, digital and effective.
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We offer research, transfer and infrastructure for lifelong learning.
The article provides an overview of the constellation of stakeholders in health education. It focuses on the publicly funded section and its current challenges such as the participants' age pattern, as well as the range of services and the relating quality standards.
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…
This article presents results of a field study exploring why illiterates start relearning reading and writing at a later age. The project SYLBE focused on reasons and obstacles of participants in basic education classes. The study provides a typology of motivations for learning and thus supports the professional acting of teaching staff in basic education.
In his presentation, Paul J. Edelson describes the current state of American adult education and refers to historical backgrounds in the process. He examines the "Learning Society" in the age of technology, i.e. the impacts of computers and the internet on education. He also touches on the American further education market and delineates possible ‘pictures’ and approaches to further education.
Within the framework of the PISA discussion, adult education must discover the parents as an affected part of the public more than has as yet been the case. Parents need scientifically founded summary knowledge as a basis for decision-making (for example concerning the educational orientation of their children), and professional guidance in matters of the enhancement of learning capacity at an early age.
Voluntary engagement is firmly integrated in the structures of our society. To be able to foster it, one has to understand who is engaged and why. Drawing on data of PIAAC and CiLL surveys, the authors show that age is not a relevant factor in why someone is engaged. Rather, education is a key factor in taking up volunteering activities. This, it is shown, is also true for non-formal activities of adult education.
Research on humans and animals gives evidence for the fact that older beings learn more slowly than younger ones, yet for this very reason they are able to build up internal representations of the true values to be learned in an increasingly more precise manner. Through frequent repetition general structures of experiences are learned. Thus, a decreasing rate of learning that comes with old age is just one side of the coin.
This article discusses participation of older people from five different perspectives: the perspective of images of old age, the perspective of individual potentials for change and participation, the perspective of the creation of public space, the perspective of social relationships and the perspective of structures of care. Participation is thus understood as a combination of personal, social, cultural, communal and societal factors. Education is seen as a central mechanism for building struc…
Knowledge and experience can be understood as pivotal didactic variables not only in age-based learning environments but also in intergenerational learning cultures. This article focuses these two concepts and analyses them with regard to their function and relevance in intergenerational learning cultures. The theoretical and empirical findings of a triangulative study will support the argument. By presenting a theoretical and practical dichotomy concerning the use of knowledge and experience i…
