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As empirical studies have shown, the Germans’ knowledge of financial affairs is rather poor. Basic knowledge on banking and insurance is often absent, even though it is essential in times when provision for a safe future increasingly becomes everyone’s personal responsibility. Even if relevant content were taught at schools comprehensively and from this moment on, today’s adults would still remain ignorant. Therefore, a tremendous task lies ahead for adult education to provide relevant knowledg…
PISA for adults? Remarks about the consequences of PISA for adult education The PISA results shown by the OECD for the school area also have consequences for adult education. For the development of adult education itself but also for a holistic concept of lifelong learning it will be of importance to be able to refer to specific international comparative results. The contribution describes measures of policies of adult education that were initiated following the PISA results and it scetches…
Educational institutes have always been seen as needing to cooperate: this idea first took shape in education acts and is now increasingly being applied to lifelong learning. In practice, however, there are many arguments against cooperation at institutes of continuing education, not least as it can create unwanted situations of rivalry among the cooperating institutes. To develop models which will help guide schools on issues of cooperation better, further research is required: What advantage…
Weaving the ‘carpet of memories’: a zigzag movement between association and knowledge This article presents a didactical strategy in the form of »zigzag learning« which works on the basis of a constant linkage between free associative learning elements (sporadic learning) with a logically structured content (systematic learning). A »carpet of memory« is woven in this zigzag movement which is propitious for learning efficacy. The strategy is presented using an example from school biology cla…
The German Adult Education Centres (VHS) consider themselves as further learning institutions for all whose aim it is to address the population at large. However, the data basis on the extent to which socially disadvantaged groups are reached is restricted. The present contribution investigates to which extent persons with a low level of school education are represented among the participants of the Adult Education Centres in Berlin. The investigation is linked to previous results of the resear…
Cooperative education arrangements are confronted with manifold anticipations which can be subsumed as ‘synergy’. This article which presents qualitative-empirical partial results of a current research project, is dealing with the question how Volkshochschulen (folk high schools) which are part of an integrated cooperation, are broaching the issue of synergy and how they describe their handling with this demand of cooperation. There are five strained dimensions of synergy and a broad spectrum o…
The term learning place was introduced into the peadagogical professional jargon and into education political linguistic usage by the German education council in 1974. The learning places named by the German education council (school, company, apprenticeship workshop and studio) gain their specifity through their different paedagogical functions in the learning process. Initially home in the area of vocational education, the term was later also adapted by adult education. That is where there is…
Positive learning experiences in childhood, adolescence, as well as during employment have a favourable effect on learning in old age. From a gerontological perspective, the significance of school education and of professional qualifications attained later in life for educational behaviour in the post-employment phase can be explained with the continuity theory. To evaluate the relevance of one’s educational biography, a representative survey was conducted. 500 individuals at the age from 50 to…
Learning from other countries? International perspectives on participation in continuing education at schools of higher learning This article adopts an international comparative perspective to identify the conditions favouring or impeding participation in university continuing education and seeks to answer the question of what we can learn from other countries. To this end, data selected from seven countries through secondary statistical analyses is presented and systematically compared to t…
