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It is controversial whether vocational basic and continuing education is substitutable or complementary. This report approaches the issue from an entrepreneurial perspective with a special focus on company sizes and provides empirical results on the basis of the IAB-Betriebspanel (representative employer survey). The valuations of a bivariate probit model also indicate the dependency of complementary and substitutional correlations on the individual company size.
Organisation and growth of the continuing training market is increasingly taking place within the private economic sector. There also is increasing reporting coverage of continuing training in accordance with the significance of lifelong learning for societal participation and the retention of occupational competences. In order to enable an accurate picture of the situation and developments of providers of general and vocational education and training to be given, it would be useful to have a k…
Based on considerations of the signaling theory and the reputation approach this study examines whether a relationship between employer-provided continuing vocational training and the success of establishments to recruit external qualified staff, can be demonstrated. The empirical analysis is based on a survey of establishments in Germany carried out in 2011. The results of a multivariate analysis show that establishments with continuing vocational training are more successful in recruiting qua…
First results from the PIAAC survey, which was conducted in 25 countries, will be published in October 2013 by OECD. PIAAC collected information about adult competencies through representative data from a background questionnaire and from assessments of three competence domains. In Germany exists an additional study called "Competencies in Later Life" (CiLL), which is designed for people (aged) between 66 and 80 years. This article presents the context of the study, the process of data collecti…
The aim of the paper is to give an overview of key issues involved in recognising non-formal and informal learning, ranging from the legitimacy of the learning activities in terms of the outcomes to be recognised, through the cost of the necessary assessment, and essential elements such as quality assurance, the standards used, the potential benefits and the real obstacles. The findings summarised here are based on a report that describes and analyses practices in the 22 countries that particip…
Networks of citizens’ commitment – On the role of adult education within the scope of the network work with the older Introduced are the partial results of a research project in North-Rhine-Westphalia, in which networks of citizens’ commitment in Düsseldorf in the area of work with older people have been evaluated. At the beginning of the contribution the term of network is explained, then the personal pre-requisites for citizens’ commitment are sketched and concluding the model of self-orga…
The author looks at two forms of learning in virtual environments: learning with hypermedia and learning by confrontation with virtual objects and „persons“ (simulations). For hypermedia, research has found a rather wide discrepancy between media-specific learning potential and actual outcome, which, especially for beginners, tends to be rather small. - Many empirical studies on learning in simulated reality have shown that simulations can indeed be conducive to learning, but that this is not a…
Based on data collected in the OECD project »Social Outcomes of Learning (SOL)«, empirical research findings and resulting policy recommendations were generated in the report »Improving Health and Social Cohesion through Education«, which are presented in this shortened and translated version. Due to the overall sparse empirical evidence of benefit research, future research forms and necessary methodological approaches are outlined.
This assumption does not seem plausible at first glance, but rather absurd instead. The regular manifestation of modern age as a knowledge-based society on the one hand as well as the consensual acceptance of the appeal for lifelong learning on the other hand, create the opposite of an image in which the pedagogical aspect of continuing education has been lost. The author argues that learners are increasingly left unsupported, lifelong learning has become more fiction than reality and continui…