Bildung und Zeit

The author diagnoses the dynamics of acceleration in our society in three parts: technological acceleration, which results in a “destruction of space”, accelerated social change, which leads to a “shrinkage of the present”, and – as a result of both of these trends – an acceleration in the subjective perception of time. The “society on the move” creates a pressure to make use of as many options in life as possible. The author shows that only deciding not to exploit all these options can help enhance the quality of life and its experience, as in principle the ratio of options taken to options which could be taken is becoming increasingly negative. But experience can also be intensified, especially by slowing things down and deceleration.

The notion of lifelong learning is reshaping the structural principle according to which learning is organised in the time structures of society. Long periods of time spent in schools are becoming more flexible, with shorter sections of ordered learning times being distributed throughout people’s lives and more flexible transitions taking place between work and learning. The three-phase scheme for working life – training, work and retirement – is becoming more flexible. The LLL concept can be seen to be a reflection of the economic need for permanent adjustment and accommodation. It also creates new possibilities for structuring peoples personal lives over time as well as their learning and vocational biographies. In order to define this aspect more adequately, the author makes a case for coining the term “life-developing education”.

This article explains what paths adults can opt for in order to acquire a reflexive understanding of time while not being content with a purely goal-oriented, “maximising” improvement in time management. Ms. Hribernik adopts Holzkamp’s approach to first of all describe what such “learning to understand time“ needs to involve before then identifying learning possibilities from an Austrian perspective – possibilities which she sees above all in books, but also in lecture events and the activities of associations working in this field. Finally, she also identifies the constraints associated with an individual analysis of this topic: usually there is no real change in behaviour or life. Fear of being left behind and losing options in life tend to hold sway.

This article presents the results of an empirical research project in which participants in continuing education and employees were surveyed about their learning times. The survey indicated that (1) continuing education is co-financed on a large scale through the devotion of private time. (2) Individuals show flexibility and commitment in creating their own learning and continuing education times. (3) Times can no longer be clearly assigned to “learning” and “working” even from a subjective point of view. (4) Frameworks and new forms of formalisation are viewed as helpful. (5) Learning is perceived as having a lower status when it is seen in terms of its economic results. This is a reflection of the fact that working and learning relate to different time categories. This makes it all the more important to develop time as a basic notice in the area of adult education.

Experience cannot be synthesised – it needs time. This aspect moves to the centre of attention when educational training time is not examined from the perspective of its exploitation, but rather in terms of its enablement. This article conceives of adults’ educational time as a qualitative factor whose content requires structuring. The structure of educational training time is at the same time viewed as a deceleration factor. Deceleration is not understood here to mean passive non-activity, but rather a sought-after “activeness” to oppose the pressure of time. Against this backdrop, a temporal-phenomenological adult education must make deceleration processes possible. Applied didactically, the article presents various practices in deceleration using the examples of time organisation, repetition, discussions and breaks, art, question and answer structures and culture.

Data on adult education centres kept since 1962 shows interesting longitudinal historical results regarding time structures for adult education classes offered at adult education centres: (1) The increase in continuing education activities which can be observed on the whole is only accounted for by course-type classes, not by individual classes. (2) The average course time has decreased by about 20 percent over the last 20 years. (3) With respect to forms of time organisation, the evening course taking place once a week has lost importance. In contrast, classes during the day and courses taking place several times a week have become more prevalent. The results are presented broken down according to topical areas.