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We explore how adult education can be made inclusive, digital and effective.
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Environmental education that fosters meaningful community participation and learning has been considered a requisite to sustaining our human and natural environments in many of the global conferences, agreements, declarations and charters since the 1972 UN Conference on the Environment in Stockholm. Despite this growing consensus there is a small amount of published research in Australia in this field of practice we have decided to call popular and informal environmental education – education t…
The author presents first-hand and personal accounts of what popular education looks like in a classroom. Barbara Bee has had over 30 years teaching experience in adult education programs with poor and disadvantaged learners. She is regarded as one of the leading Australian practitioners in that time who drew inspiration from Paulo Freire. She describes how teaching in the 1970s and 1980s was so different to today. Back then teachers were encouraged to negotiate the curriculum with students. Bu…
This paper arguments that if competency assessment is to make any contribution as a potentially “liberating” curriculum strategy for struggles of community development and self-determination then it needs to contest the authoritarianism of the national qualification frameworks that have been established in Australia and New Zealand. This article critiques research and policy efforts, in particular for indigenous learners which seek to merely make authoritarian curriculum and assessment structur…
From the viewpoint of Akademie Remscheid, a leading provider of further education courses involving education through play, this article presents the facets of the phenomenon of play as relevant to education and illustrates them using several examples of play that can be applied to adult education. The focus is on group games which can be played using simple materials. The central fields of learning targeted by play are identified as social skills, perception, expression, creativity and problem…
Dieser Studientext beschreibt den nationalen und internationalen Stand der Forschung zum Phänomen des funktionalen Analphabetismus. Der Autor grenzt Begrifflichkeiten voneinander ab, veranschaulicht Argumentationsstränge und schafft damit eine fundierte Basis zur Entwicklung neuer Perspektiven und Ansätze für die weitere empirische und theoretische Erforschung von Lese- und Schreibfertigkeitsdefiziten. Studierende der Erwachsenenbildung und interessierte Akteure im Umfeld der Alphabetisierung…
Foreign languages à la mode. Trends in adult language acquisition based on the example of the VHS programme Learning foreign languages is a high-status activity in organised adult learning. Based on VHS (adult education centre) statistics, the author shows that foreign languages are an indispensable element of the VHS programme range; hardly any other area is in such constantly high demand, a demand which can also be seen in relation to income status. Now making up 30 percent of all courses,…
Im Rahmen des Projekts „Alphabit“ wurden mit Kursleitenden aus dem Bereich Alphabetisierung und Grundbildung telefonische Interviews durchgeführt. Sie konzentrierten sich u. a. auf die Aspekte „Teilnehmende in Kursen“, „Status der Kursleitenden“ und „Neue Medien“. Ziel der Interviews war es, die Möglichkeiten für den Einsatz von neuen Medien in der Alphabetisierungs- und Grundbildungsarbeit besser einschätzen zu können. Einige Aussagen der Kursleitenden geben Anlass zu einer kritischen Betra…
Exploring the inner aspect of learning. Methodological considerations for investigating life-long learning This article sets out research methods required for qualitative research aimed at understanding the inner aspect of learning. The aim is to make qualitative single case studies more relevant with regard to issues of education policy and social analysis. For this purpose, the following measures are proposed. (1) Close reading and reflexivity: Precisely studying the source texts sheds lig…
Receptive or hostile to continuing education? Course tutors caught between the pressure to conform and resistance This article presents the results of a qualitative dissertation. The author has investigated the acceptance of adult education teacher training courses among part-time and freelance teachers based on the example of the initial adult education teacher training qualification offered by the North Rhine Westphalia VHS (adult education centre) regional association. For the issue of a…
Referred back to oneself. Reflexive modernisation and new learning requirements This article probes the relationship between our risk society, reflexive modernity and individual learning. First, social conditions are illuminated (with reference to Beck, Giddens and Lash) which force people to endure uncertainty (Mitscherlich and Marotzki) and gain critical ego strength. Next the author focuses attention on the reality of contemporary ways of dealing with demands, turning to findings from nar…
