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Departing from the variety of understandings of “region” both in general and in Adult Education, the author aims at a new definition of the term against the backdrop of current discussions on space. Based on a geographic approach, the author analyzes recent literature in the field of Adult Education. He identifies a shift in both politics and research. He, suggests, with Schöning, to evaluate the concept from a variety of perspectives – from the point of view of the subject, of the organiz…
In recent years, “popular education” has become a highly relevant topic in the international debate. At the same time, research efforts on this subject matter have been increasing. The concept of “popular education” is understood as different from or marginalized by dominant discourses and institutions. This issue of REPORT will raise awareness for both the historical origins and the current discussions of popular education in adult education. The articles collected will evaluate if such concep…
Competence profiles for adult educators - European perspectives on the occasion of the EQF discussion One important piece of groundwork for the EQF debate in the adult education profession is to explore relevant competence profiles. In the run-up to a European conference, as part of an EU-funded project, profiles of this type in the countries of Europe were studied, compared and checked to discover whether they could be linked in to the Qualifications Framework. The article, originally publi…
Striving for quality is at the core of pedagogical professionalism. Therefore the science of further education has to intervene in the quality discussion in two ways: Firstly, it must develop criteria by which systems of quality assurance can be compared and by which their appropriateness for the sector of further education can be evaluated. Secondly, it must inquire yet more persistently into the specifics of pedagogical quality and find out what further education science can contribute toward…
Contemporary discourses in the context of educational governance mostly ignore the field of adult education. Discussions focus on global or national level, the significance of municipalities in managing education systems is widely overseen. This paper picks up the concept of governance to identify the structure and processes of managing adult education on municipality level. On the basis of two model examples the practical implementation of adult education governance will be illustrated, which …
The Future Workshop was originally developed for citizen groups with limited resources who wanted a say in the decision making process. It is a technique meant to shed light on a common problematic situation, to generate visions about the future, and to discuss how these visions can be realised. The paper describes the origin of the method. The methodological steps (phases) of the method are explained and in the second part there is a discussion of the strengths and weakness of the approach gu…
Basic civic education is discussed as a substantial pillar in the discussion on basic education, although little is known about the basic civic skills of adults with low literacy skills. In this article based on the results of LEO 2018 and with logistic regression models, the thesis is examined that low-literate adults assess their own civic skills as rather low and thus exclude themselves from the political field. It is shown that even when controlling for various socio-economic factors, low-l…
Professionalization in adult education and the memory culture The discussion of the adult education and its history opens for a closer look at the process of its professionalization. The position of the temporal delimitation and the focusing on the contents come into focus. It turns out that the history of woman education is not represented explicitly in textbooks on the history of the adult education. Focussing on historical factual knowledge and experience knowledge, the analysis of memor…
Due to the increasing blur of learning boundaries, the need arises for re-defining the concept of learning space. Based on an understanding of learning space, which refers to the local circumstances within organized education programs, the article initially aspires to include the debate on learning space in the discussion of informal learning, before it then focuses on the relation between time and location and the significance of virtual learning spaces. The article itself does not re-define t…
The German Society for Promotion of Research at Old Age (Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Forschung im Alter – DGFFA) wants to give an impulse for the intensification of the discussion on those aspects of the demographic change, to which the universities/colleges would need to devote themselves to in due time, if they strive to consolidate their future viability in a society of lifelong learning. The presented suggestions in this contribution are components of a position paper that a wor…
