Gesundheit

The report unfolds »biography« and »body« as categories for explaining holistic health education theoretically. At the same time, these terms open up adult educational opportunities, which can be defined by health educational didactics. Dimensions of knowledge and experience meet on an educational level in »biography« and »body«.

The article depicts a structural model of health competences consisting of basic and developed skills, which refer to a perceptive-motivational as well as activity-based level. As a contrast to health literacy, the model is detached from the clinical context and intended as a life competence for health. The article also focuses on the empirical model review as well as on the issue of how to acquire competences.

Thinking in statistical patterns is a core competence of the responsible citizen, who is capable of making informed health decisions. At the same time, a lack of statistical skills as well as non-transparent communication of risks undermines the ideal of an enlightened citizen. Thus, educational programmes are responsible for imparting basic concepts of statistical thinking as well as equipping citizens directly and via mediators to enable informed decisions.

The article provides an overview of the constellation of stakeholders in health education. It focuses on the publicly funded section and its current challenges such as the participants' age pattern, as well as the range of services and the relating quality standards.

ReSuDI is an innovative company prevention concept for semi-skilled and unskilled employees, who, in Germany, increasingly have a migrational background. Due to the difficult access to this target group, ReSuDi involves multipliers, who can influence the employees during their daily working routine. As a result, they are able to initiate learning processes and improve the working condition. ReSuDi is a comprehensive organisational programme, i.e. all hierarchy levels are included and personal and conditional intervention objectives are pursued to enhance the transfer and sustainability of effects. ReSuDi has been evaluated successfully in various companies, thus revealing the correlation between success and the quality of process monitoring.

Based on the development of modern information and communication technologies, the author tries to get to the bottom of the significance of reading and writing skills for the participation in society and the job market. He recognises a growing replacement by auditive and visual formats such as voice recognition and pictograms. Against this background, he calls for the recognition of developing smart technologies as the key for handling insufficient reading and writing skills.

The author pursues the issue whether gender equity has been achieved in continuing educational participation. According to Friebel, this question can only be answered if the life and work contexts are considered as a biographic regulative of the participation in continuing education. The underlying empirical data is based on the longitudinal study »Hamburger Biografie- und Lebenslaufpanel« (HBLP), in which findings about the correlation of gender, parenthood and participation in continuing education in the tradition of life course research are discussed.