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.
New ideas for supporting the human working memory are required to take advantage of the options of teaching/learning processes provided by digitalisation. A new "cognitive interface" is necessary for connecting human knowledge with the knowledge of digital resources.
It is widely acknowledged that adult education is a moral enterprise in many respects. There is a demand for empirical research on which groups of actors are dealing with professional ethical issues and which specific ethical problems arise in adult education practice. The authors analyze ethical standards and policies of adult education associations in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Based on the outcomes of this analysis, they present a proposal on how a discourse on ethical standards in ad…
Das Heft Erwachsenenbuilding spannt den Horizont auf zwischen Weiterbildung und den Begriffen Bewegung, Sport und Körper. Anlässe hierfür gibt es mehrere: Ein Europäisches Jahr der Erziehung durch Sport 2004, eine pädagogische Debatte, die über die Rezeption der Neurobiologie den Körper wiederentdeckt, und schließlich eine zunehmend entgrenzte Weiterbildung, die Blicke über den Tellerrand der organisierten Erwachsenenbildung immer wichtiger werden lässt. Die Beiträge handeln u.a. von der Weiter…
The following article focuses the mostly neglected relation between identity and learning by reconstructing foreign learning efforts by adults. In spite of educational policy's proclamation of (continuous) lifelong learning real learning processes are characterized by various discontinuities. Adults deal with these discontinuities by perceiving, describing and structuring them dependent on their self-images as learners. Interpretations of interviews with adult language learners supply evidence …
The article focuses on the development of the global educational discourse from a human rights perspective, particularly with regard to adult education and lifelong learning. The author discusses the historic milestones set by the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the consequent understanding of learning as well as the various national implementation strategies of the right for lifelong learning.
This study explores the definition of „adult basic education“ from the perspective of public education administration of the German Laender. On the one hand, adult basic education is claimed as a public good that has to be made accessible by public funding. One the other hand, there is still no agreement on the definition of adult basic education. Based on a subject-scientific approach, qualitative interviews are conducted with administrative employees in order to explore dimensions and justifi…
Hanft, Anke; Zentner, Tim: Qualification and personnel development – a competence gap in adult education institutions? Results of an empirical study on qualification of staff in adult education institutions The contribution analyses how adult education institutions and universities prepare their staff with education and training for changed structural requirements and reforms. In the centre are two studies of German state universities and public adult education institutions in the country N…
This article examines learning at the university, which is located in the institutional context of the university with its structural conditions. The analysis of learning at universities opens research perspectives, to which the adult education science can deliver substantial contributions.
Data on adult education centres kept since 1962 shows interesting longitudinal historical results regarding time structures for adult education classes offered at adult education centres: (1) The increase in continuing education activities which can be observed on the whole is only accounted for by course-type classes, not by individual classes. (2) The average course time has decreased by about 20 percent over the last 20 years. (3) With respect to forms of time organisation, the evening cours…
