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The article presents the results of an empirical study on the “knowledge officially indented to be learned” as it is jointly created by 51 study programmes of educational management. Within a complete survey, the content of all study programmes was categorized to obtain the common form of this knowledge within the German-speaking area. To obtain the common form of the named knowledge the study handbooks of the programmes were analysed by using the method of a qualitative content analysis. Addit…
The paper discusses learning as a way of obtaining recognition in adult life. Recognition is one of the basic categories of A. Honneth’s notion of justice. The opinions presented in this paper have been formulated on the basis of the research carried out among non-traditional students of OSW. Adult students who pursue education often express deep satisfaction they experience in the course of their studies, claiming that the process has helped them to boost their confidence and increase their ow…
This article focuses on the requirement for teachers and trainers in adult education to reflect on their professional actions and teaching experiences. After a short overview of the current debate on professionalism, a definition of the term didactical reflection is elaborated, differentiating between two levels of reflection: on one hand a direct didactical reflection on teaching actions or situations and on the other hand a self-including reflection. Subjective definitions of successful teach…
The article focuses on an empirical desideratum of research on teaching and learning in adult education – the planning of courses. The planning of courses is a complex decision-making process, which influences the teaching and learning behavior. Empirical findings of schoolteachers’ planning and results of interviews with trainers in adult education are used to identify elements and potential factors that influenced planning behavior. Based on this, the article develops research prospects and a…
The planning of teaching and learning is a key task for teachers of adult and continuing education. This recurrent challenge demands situational decisions regarding objectives, contents, media and activities of teaching and learning, taking into consideration both the learner as well as organisational and spatial factors. However, empirical research indicates that these complex and interdependent decisions are often tackled insufficiently. Digital planning tools can be used to reduce the comple…
Adult education increasingly occupies the center of education policy and hence the corresponding governance aspirations on the national, supra- and international level. Large-scale-assessment studies, like PIAAC, further raised public attention for adult education with a focus on the low educated. This study analyzes overall and spatial participation in adult education in the national context using multi-level modeling. Using data from the European Labour Force Survey 2013 it shows that (1) the…
This article investigates the internationally-comparative question how basic education policy is understood at the national level of policy formulation (policy), and how this basic education policy is – taking into account the institutional rules and responsibilities of the multi-level-system (polity) – implemented by a constellation of actors into national education policy (politics). On the basis of empirical data from the project “EU-Alpha”, the interplay of policy, polity and politics in ba…
The article focuses the question whether workforce literacy strategies in research and policies may tend to exclude relevant fields of literacy, which have emancipatory chances for participants, but which regularly fail in including low qualified or literate adults, namely the area of basic civic education. The relevance of basic civic education will be discussed using contemporary theories, which point at a crisis of democracy and explain this by the spread of income and capital and its legiti…
This paper draws on three data sources – a national survey from Germany of adult literacy and numeracy skills (leo. – Level-One Study), the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC), and case studies of workplaces in England – to argue for a greater focus by policymakers and researchers on the literacy demand experienced by adults. We consider the heterogeneity of the population of adults deemed functionally illiterate by large-scale national and internatio…
