Research
We explore how adult education can be made inclusive, digital and effective.
Services
Digital tools, specialist portals and data – for teachers, researchers, students and interested parties.
Institute
We offer research, transfer and infrastructure for lifelong learning.
Competence and education, emotions and virtues The ambivalence of competence in the portfolio experience of volunteers A portfolio setting in which volunteers identify, evaluate and document their competencies acquired through voluntary work is at the same time a location of special experience with education and competence: competencies expected by the labour market and acquired in voluntary work converge with predominating notions of education. This article looks at the antagonisms and int…
The article studies the image of adults behind the concept of lifelong learning. Educational policy documents are studied, which substantiate strategies of lifelong learning on a global, European and national level. Papers issued by the UNESCO, OECD, EU-Commission and Federal/State Commission for Educational Planning and Research Promotion (Bund-Länder-Kommission – BLK) rarely explicitly include adults. The adult is – if included at all – outlined as a working person, as a citizen and as a resp…
The staff in adult and continuing education is the most important factor for a high quality and demand-oriented development of training courses and their effective implementation. However, there existed only insufficient data and information on these persons. For the first time, the wb-personalmonitor now provides data on demographics, employment situation, living conditions, job profiles, qualifications as well as job related attitudes for the staff in adult and continuing education. Thus, the…
This volume aims at the description, the analysis and the explanation of cultural/arts education for adults. It conveys insights into the field through the lens of interdisciplinary theoretical approaches to the arts, to culture and to transculturality and links them to reflections and empirical findings from the adult education discipline, in particular in the areas of programme analysis. Through this we attempt to inspire further research and theory-building on cultural/arts education for adu…
Hattie‘s study »Visible Learning« is no reason to call for didactic changes in adult education - this is this article’s conclusion of the New Zealander’s meta-study from a continuing educational perspective. Nontheless, Hattie provides significant suggestions for the didactic debate. These suggestions include guidelines for suitable teaching activities as well as his rather provocative findings on the positive effects of actively guided lessons, which do not contradict adult educational conside…
Development of personality competence and central further education barriers in social milieus Presented are partial results of a current Germany-wide empirical qualitative analysis in which the social and regional differentiation of adult education interests and adult education behaviour in the tradition of milieu research are ascertains and interpreted. On the basis of three social ambiences the development of personality competence and typical further education barriers are introduced.
The "learning time account" links the politics of working hours with professional adult education. As a derivative from the "working hours account" it represents an instrument with which the worked for time demands of the employee is changed into adult education instead of into money. Depending on whether the adult education serves work related or private matters, the resources are made available by the employer or by the employee (time and money). In the discussion of lifelong learning the ins…
Caught between Two Stools. Adult Education for People with Intellectual Disabilities The report analyses connecting factors for the manifestation of an inclusive approach in adult education for people with mental disabilities. It presents existing organisational forms and qualification paths. The core challenge is seen in the development of an inclusive professionalism which combines the expertise and competences existing in both general adult education and help for the disabled. The develop…
Biographical Orientations for Older People in Adult Education In times of demographic changes and an increasing flexibility of biographies, adult education is in need of adjusting its repertoire. General and highly standardized programmes alone do no longer fit the heterogeneity of its target groups. The article is based on two empirical studies – one focuses on individual management of work path, the other shows the importance of structuring time and activities to elder people. With these, …
Natural Sciences as a Constitutive Element of Modern Adult Education Imparting natural scientific knowledge to a socially broad audience was already quite common in manifold forms before adult education as such was really constituted in the last third of the 19th century. Some of the questions raised when natural science spread in the 18th and 19th centuries are still or again relevant in the 21st century. This paper tries to demonstrate that notion in a summarized form on the basis of an ex…
