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Within the field of adult education/continuing education the topic counselling occupies a central role. This concerns the theoretical discourses as well as the different types of offers. This study book situates the topic counselling in its pedagogical reference framework and provides central lines of development and differentiation. These include questions about the interaction, the forms of action and the conditions of good consultation. Moreover different forms of educational guidance are ou…
Pioneers from the Islands - National Qualifications Framework in England, Scotland and Ireland This article looks into the genesis and structure of the qualifications frameworks in England, Scotland and Ireland, compares them and concludes with notes to be taken into account for developments in Germany. The qualifications frameworks described, which are considered the forerunners of the EQF, have improved connections between the educational sectors. Their recognised benefit is the transpare…
In Retrospect: On the Conception of REPORT and its Development A conversation with the founding editors The reason for this interview is REPORT’s 30-year existence. Thus, the time has come to once again recall the events and experiences in its long history. In 1978, the “Literature and Research Report Continuing Education” was published for the first time and was essentially a review journal created to give an overview of the still widely scattered and developing discipline of adult and con…
Starting from constructivist, neurophysiologic and learning psychological deliberations the actual learning place should be described as the human being because only within him is where the learning takes place. Unanimously though, learning is always carried out in interaction with contextual factors. The outer environment – and therewith also local conditions – influence the processing of information. Hereunto three examples are named: (1) The Loci method links memory contents with places. (2)…
Mediating considered from a learning theoretical angle Mediating and the theory or science of mediating are current topics of theory building and practice in the field of didactics. This was the reason to investigate whether and how research results combining learning and teaching may support the construction of such a concept. A general framework of acting and teaching is introduced from the perspective of the learning subject. The focus is on the concept of a complex and more dimensional a…
In the current transition from industrial society towards an „information society“, the importance of access to and information about new information and communication technologies is ever growing. A „digital divide“ between competent users and nonusers, forming a new class of „information have-nots“, may be the consequence. – The author points to the increasing importance of the Internet as a provider of everyday information, as well as to the danger of excluding great numbers of individual…
Lerntheorien sind eine wichtige Grundlage für alle, die sich professionell mit Lehren auseinandersetzen. In jüngerer Vergangenheit entstanden viele Theorien, die über den Behaviorismus und Kognitivismus hinausweisen und Lernen als menschliche Aktivität in einem sozialen Zusammenhang begreifen. Dadurch eröffnen sich lerntheoretische Bezüge zu Interessen, Gemeinschaften, Gefühlen, Arbeitsplätzen u.a. Auch wird die Vorstellung überwunden, Lernen sei primär für Kinder und Jugendliche bedeutsam. So …
Political Education has a long tradition in Austrian adult education. In the period of the Second Republic, ist is cinsidered marginalized. A closer look puts this assumption into perspective. Political education is widely party-centered and present in large-scale organizations such as the Federation of Trade Unions. There is a wide and confusing institutional landscape. With a few exeptions, political education is marginalized within traditional adult education such as the peoples universities…
This study starts from a dilemma which has been observed in adult basic education. On the one hand the use of assessments is regarded as supportive in order to determine in detail the learning needs of adults. On the other hand it is to be expected that persons with experiences of performing inadequately show justified anxieties or resistances in connection with test situations. I have chosen a research approach, which follows Holzkamp’s concept of a subject-scientific learning theory (1995), b…
The relation between sustainability and widening access to adult learners in higher education is both well comprehensible and highly vague. Accordingly, and following the arguments of Seghezzo (2009) and Foster (2001), the paper aims to complement academic discourse on widening access of higher education by showing the benefit of using the concept of sustainability not merely as an operational measurement index or a learning topic content-wise. Rather, a different understanding of sustainabilit…
