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Didactical quality is a crucial precondition if all citizens of the European Union are to be able to develop multilingual skills. Here it is in particular adult education centres which have the task of training their teachers and offering them continuing education so as to make possible optimum didactical classroom instruction. This article shows that applied linguistics and research on teaching languages can provide an important impetus here. The author moreover issues a plea for specialised d…
Proceeding from the educational policy objective of achieving greater participation in continuing education, this article presents a set of instruments with which the learning and educational behaviour of adults can be measured statistically. Taking the example of data selected from the Continuing Education Reporting System (Berichtssystem Weiterbildung (BSW)) and the Adult Education Survey (AES), the potential for analysis and the generation of knowledge offered by statistics on continuing edu…
As a priority of education policy Lifelong Learning implies flexible individual learning pathways in different settings. Within the demographic change and the demand of higher skills higher education qualifications become increasingly important to reach employment, why higher education institutions need to open up against new target groups. This article focuses on further education offered by higher education institutions and intends to give a picture of the current demand and supply. Empirical…
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…
For the author, "globalization" and "lifelong learning" are the epitome of disengagement in the economic and/or the pedagogic field. Using the genre of meditation, he develops the concept of disengagement - a shedding of limitations - by the example of disasters, markets, exacting demands in the context of learning, the power of the economy, the responsibilities for education. Reflecting on Comenius and Ralf Dahrendorf, the author tries to “bring the amok-running economism back to its senses” a…
The "Yellow Series" contains an didactically structured inventory of relevant topics in the field of adult education. It imparts professional knowledge based on the academic state of research. The volumes are intended for self-studying but are also suited as additional reading for studying and training. The systematic preparation of each topic also supports specialists in assuring the theoretical and methodological base of their actions.
Participation in continuing higher education has various perspectives particularly with regard to lifelong learning. By arrangements in the field of continuing higher education, universities need to react to changing learning and educational biographies as well as to enable prospects in the context of lifelong learning. An important aspect belonging to this is the transfer of knowledge. Based on the definition of influencing factors on transfer of knowledge by von Krogh and Köhne, the system of…
From 1992 to 2007 a considerable amount of German and EU funding was put into development projects described as “Qualification Development Management” (German acronym: QUEM) and aimed to support the quality of vocational qualification structures in the former GDR. QUEM was sponsored by the ABWF (Study Group for Corporate Continuing Education Research). In this article the author, a scientist working on QUEM, sums up the activities in the programmes and projects which were funded. He identifies …
Die 17 Nachhaltigkeitsziele und damit auch Bildung für Nachhaltige Entwicklung sind durchzogen von Zielkonflikten. Wie mit dieser inhärenten Ambiguität in der Bildungspraxis produktiv umgegangen werden kann, zeigt die Autorin am Beispiel des Programms der vhs Essen und plädiert dafür, Ambiguitäten als Ausgangspunkt und Ziel von Aushandlungsprozessen zu verstehen.
Unter Rückgriff auf eigene Erfahrungen in der Biografiearbeit mit Menschen im höheren Lebensalter erläutert der Autor den Zusammenhang von Ambiguität, Ambiguitätstoleranz und Identität. Dabei diene auch die rückschauende Biografiearbeit nicht nur der Bilanzierung, sondern der Gegenwartsgestaltung und -bewältigung.