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Both interest in and understanding of narrative analysis has developed rapidly in recent years and is now a mainstream element of research across many disciplines. In this book, the author illustrates as many facets as possible of the stories people tell about their lives. She demonstrates the interconnectedness between engagements in narrative research and shows that the theoretical understanding of the nature of narrative is bound up with the methods for biographical narrative research. Throu…
This paper brings into focus the discourse on competences and reviews critically the potential of large-scale assessments. The measurement of competences in adulthood is a step towards a deeper understanding of the development of competences during the life course, although only domain specific and not general competences are taken into consideration. Based on the current research, the debate on competences will be reflected and the central points in the field of modeling the constructs of skil…
Education and equity are certainly central issues of educational research as well as topics of controversial public debate. On the one hand, Social Justice and Inequality Research focus on adult education, on the other hand adult education addresses the subject itself. Through the re-analysis of organizational structural data gathered from adult education providers in the state of Hesse, Germany, this article takes a closer look at the field of adult education. It aims to examine participation …
Voluntary Commitment and Learning. Results of a Survey on Volunteers by the Federal Government The Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth’s (BMFSFJ) survey on volunteers, carried out in 1999 and 2004, shows that voluntary work is on the rise, especially in the area of work with young people and adult education. Learning motives play a major role in voluntary commitments. Technical expertise is also considered to be important, but more so by men than by women. O…
Positive learning experiences in childhood, adolescence, as well as during employment have a favourable effect on learning in old age. From a gerontological perspective, the significance of school education and of professional qualifications attained later in life for educational behaviour in the post-employment phase can be explained with the continuity theory. To evaluate the relevance of one’s educational biography, a representative survey was conducted. 500 individuals at the age from 50 to…
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.
Biography and Education Biographical aspects are coming increasingly under the focus of teaching-learning and educational research in the context of international comparative studies and the debate over self-organised and self-guided learning. Different theoretical approaches are selected and current empirical findings in the area of biographical research are presented in this issue in order to shed light on the interrelationship between education and biography.
The objective of this empirical study is to provide an overview of the strategies and measures that further education institutions employ concerning migration and diversity. Focusing on organization-wide approaches which foster diversity, the study analyses the level of organization and management, human resources and the spectrum of educational opportunities. The survey was addressed to public educational institutions that are legally recognized as well as to private institutions. The empirica…
Research on learning - a retrospective The history of empirical research on adults’ learning reaches back until the twenties of the last century. This contribution evokes some interpretative research on the pedagogy of learning and teaching for adults. It seems that the adult education sciences’ disciplinary memory is underdeveloped as many instructive older analysis seem to have fallen into oblivion. Recent studies mostly don’t pay attention to the linkages and continuity of the questions. …
