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.
The article introduces two commemorative articles for anniversaries of adult education providers and identifies their trivialising way of dealing with problematic parts of history. The commemorative article for the 100th anniversary of the „Heimvolkshochschule Tingleff“ plays the role of its managing director during the NS-regime down. The commemorative article on behalf of a city’s 800th anniversary dealing with the history of the Community Adult Education Centre Dresden excludes the problemat…
In the present contribution the final report of the Expert Commission on Financing Lifelong Learning is compared to a firework: it has provoked a short-term enthusiasm and attention. What is there to do in order not to let the ideas deflagrate but conserve chances for their implementation? The author asks the actors of further education to help oneself offensively with the arguments of the report (“public interest“, “more investments necessary“, “increase sovereignty demand“) and to advertise t…
Lifelong learning on a high quality level is a condition for participation in further economical and social developments in society. But how are lifelong learning activities to be financed? Are projects of the European Union the key for solving financial problems of institutional and organized learning? The author describes his experiences made with the acquisition of EU-projects. The article points out difficulties and problems in the process of acquisition, searching partners and trying to co…
The article systematizes perspectives for the development of supply structures for people with a migrant background, especially for refugees. For this purpose, the article defines an integration concept that focuses various educationally relevant levels and dimensions, which are entangled with a perspective of the intercultural and transcultural adult and further education. Based on the results from various program analyzes studies and ongoing research projects, it furthermore reflects, how the…
Quality in further education is not supposed first and foremost to serve the educational organisation itself (the „within“), but the learners (the organisation’s „without”). The “without” should therefore have a substantial say when quality measures are developed and evaluated. Dr. Ch. Ehses and Prof. Dr. R. Zech of the “ArtSet Institut für kritische Sozialforschung und Bildungsarbeit e.V.” explain why the external view-point – the learners’ perspective – is essential, how it can work and what …
In the usually clearly word- and text-oriented research field of adult education, for a while now, approaches have been observed, which understand visual presentations as data to be analyzed in a methodically controlled way. These data are used in order to generate and substantiate knowledge about adult education, whereby intensity, contexts, theoretical background and methods or methodology are different. This article presents these approaches in the research fields focusing on students, progr…
The development of interest in adult education This article presents results of a project funded by the DFG on the development of interest in continuing and further education. We connect our work to most recent research on biographical genesis of interest and focus occuring during an individual’s participation in adult education. As theoretical approach we refer to the Munich theory of interest and the pragmatist approach. We empirically investigate the opportunities and limitations of a qua…
How to relate Natural Sciences to Adult Education Drawing on an intensive debate on the improvement of scientific literacy going on in Germany for more than ten years, this article deals with possible contributions of adult education. Starting with the marginal supply of science courses for adults, I focus on typical didactical arrangements and concepts. Based on an empirical study, exemplary didactical concepts are analysed regarding aims, topics, course type, and audience. The results are…
The demographic change and the growing demand of skilled workers in Germany puts workers with migration background in the focus of interest in politics, economy, research and, increasingly, of adult education. The following article analyses empirically the relationship between the socio-cultural determinants, which are theoretically embedded in Esser’s model of social integration, and the participation in further vocational education of working adults with a migration background in Germany on t…
