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Resistance against education and learning as a result of pedagogical and didactic acting: The article reports two research projects in adult education at the University of Kaiserslautern focussing identity-relevant and emotional aspects of learning resistance. While both aspects are rather neglected in the research on education and learning they are substantial for the understanding of learning resistance phenomena as well as for the reconstruction of the own pedagogical practice.
In the context of lifelong learning, adults are increasingly being viewed from a biographical perspective. This article takes a look at how differently – and in some cases inconsistently – adults are construed as biographical subjects in education policy, in educational practice, and in research on adult education. It argues that to even begin to examine the processes and practices of biographical subjectification that take place in adult and continuing education, biographical research must be …
This article provides an overview of the debate on learning environments and learning locations within adult education research; the authors use a historical review of main research topics in order to understand current learning environments and recent theoretical and empirical discussions. The term of learning environments or learning locations has been introduced into research on adult education in the 1970ies; since this time, each following decade can be characterized by several specific re…
This article presents didactic approaches to financial literacy using the example of the CurVe project (debt counselling as a starting point for basic education – curricular integration and transitions) which was launched at the German Institute for Adult Education (DIE) in March 2013. The project analyses the connection between excessive debt and basic educational needs. Its focus is on participative didactics and its goals include the strengthening of basic education through the conceptualisa…
The study text points out relevant research criteria for an evaluation in the field of adult education. For that purpose, basic concepts and theories are discussed and objectives, tasks, and principles of evaluation are outlined. The author refers to classic targets of evaluation – teaching/learning processes, educational institutions, projects/programmes as well as the education system – to present the features of adult education evaluation. In this context, the issue of required object-relate…
The report introduces the topic of municipal education monitoring based on the »Aachen Declaration« on municipal educational responsibility by the German Association of Cities and Towns. The statistics on adult education centres are essential for the still limited local continuing education monitoring. Two examples (Rheingau-Taunus district and City of Trier) explicate the data benefits, which indicate strengths and weaknesses and reveal operative requirements to decision makers in institutions…
Political Adult Education and its Crises Political education is often attested as being somewhat critical. As was the case of the twentieth publication of REPORT in 1987 in which the main focus – even though at the time it was not identified as such – was on this theme. The issue commenced with a contribution from Horst Siebert; this contribution shall now be the starting point to explore the highlights on the development of the past years and to determine its positioning. This will ensue in…
The article introduces two commemorative articles for anniversaries of adult education providers and identifies their trivialising way of dealing with problematic parts of history. The commemorative article for the 100th anniversary of the „Heimvolkshochschule Tingleff“ plays the role of its managing director during the NS-regime down. The commemorative article on behalf of a city’s 800th anniversary dealing with the history of the Community Adult Education Centre Dresden excludes the problemat…
A planned offer of further education organisations, orientated by the participant`s needs and interests, implies empirically confirmed data. The situation of data concerning further education behaviour and -interests of migrants in Germany referring to this is however moderate. This is on the one hand due to the definition problem of such constructs as “further education” and “people from migrant background” and adjunct to the difficulties with the operationalisation. On the other hand the data…
10% of German adults are estimated 1995 by OECD to be on a very low level of literacy, about 30% are on a low level. The author explores definitions and dimension of basic education. Restrictions exist for discussion in the lack of University research and the fact that illiterates form a part of the population described to be on a low level of literacy. But basic education is the prerequisite for independent, self-organized learning and the basis of general education. Therefore concepts to inte…