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While the calls to take more notice of the significance of migration for adult education are loud and clear, notably little attention is paid to them with regard to work on categories. In adult education, fundamental theoretical work on definitions of “migration” is still far from complete. Even though individual studies deal with the term, it seems that attempts to clarify categories remain scarce. If adult education research on migration has a genuine interest in examining the risks of the hi…
Following Piaget and recent research on psychodynamics, the author establishes theses on distinctively suitable adult learning. She recapitulates essential theses from her book »Zur Konstruktion des Erwachsenen« (On the Structure of Adults) and refines them with regard to autonomy as a learning incentive. The author believes that learning processes, which are characteristic for adults, occur mainly when old structures are overcome and learning procedures are modified. The learning incentive is…
This report from England is part of a research project entitled Literacy/Basic Education – State of the Art from a historical and systematic Perspective in terms of Transferability. It focuses on the way adult (il)literacy has been approached, dealt with, discussed and analysed both politically and scientifically in England. It provides a historical overview on government strategy papers and outlines central ideas in theoretical discussions regarding literacy and literacy practices. However, in…
Interest and Learning This article presents an overview of the so-called educational-psychological theory of interest and demonstrates its relevance for the processes and results of learning. Following this theoretical approach, interest behaviour can be described as a relation between person and object. It is accompanied by self-determination, positive emotions and a strong personal relation to certain objects or actions. Advantages of interest-motivated learning appear in improving cogniti…
German universities have been compelled to live on a tight budget for years. Therefore, university financing is on the one hand concerned with more efficiency, on the other hand with the opening up new sources of income. Possible instruments for more efficiency are global budgets and the dividing-up of budgets according to indicators. New sources of income might be funded research and the provision of further education. But German universities are still a long way from being "entrepreneurial un…
Within the bounds of constitutional law, the Federal Government has educational-political powers concerning educational contents. These it exercises in manifold programmes and initiatives, among others in the area of further education. Veronika Pahl, head of the competent department in the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) gives a summar y of the most important initiatives along with the political considerations that form their background. Quality problems are grouped in categor…
Die Auswirkungen der Corona-Pandemie zeigen sich auf allen Ebenen der EB / WB – bei den (Organisations-)Strukturen, den Mitarbeitenden, den Formaten sowie den Teilnehmenden. weiter bilden wagt eine erste Einschätzung und fragt: Was fehlt, das es vor Corona gab? Ist der Wandel so disruptiv, dass gänzlich neue Wege eingeschlagen werden?
Adult education is a field that is strongly shaped by tensions between scientific and political demands. The development of competencies as well as the idea of continuing to learn throughout the whole life are topics that have been debated in science and policy for many years and are still of great importance today. This dissertation deals with the relationship between science and European education policy in adult education by analyzing scientific journal articles and political documents from …
In Switzerland, experienced teachers can validate their competencies which they have achieved in the field of adult education. By submitting a self-assessment which is oriented along a competency profile, to the Swiss Association for Continuing Education (SVEB), the teachers demonstrate in a comprehensible way that they possess the necessary competences to teach in adult education. Experts examine the submitted self-assessments and use the competency profile as a reference standard. The experts…
The concept of self-optimisation is closely linked to discourses on lifelong learning and has been discussed in adult education research for some time. The talk about selfoptimisation is mostly articulated as a critique or critical analysis, appears as almost self-evident and thus gets caught up in the pull of normalisation. The established problematisation of self-optimisation is therefore also subjected to problematization in this paper in an attempt to reopen the thinking of the problem. Th…
