Vertikale und horizontale Durchlässigkeit im System Lebenslangen Lernens

Migrants are faced with the particular challenge of gaining acknowledgment and social acceptance of their qualifications acquired in their country of origin. They stand to benefit from a comprehensive implementation of the lifelong learning strategy. The acknowledgement of individual skills and competences should not depend on the individual learning environment. Being successful in the labour market is an important objective for holders of foreign qualifications. In addition, being located in the German educational system and having access to continuing education plays a key role for migrants.

The European Qualification Framework and the National Qualification Framework of Germany are two offer-specific reference instruments, which should be implemented in the German educational and employment systems. Both of them are difficult to estimate in regard to their transparency, penetrability and support of labour market mobility. Enterprises and educational institutes seem to be different in their logic of action concerning their educational and qualification achievements in the society. Therefore there is a great deal of scepticism in their response to both the EQF and the NQF. The pragmatic understanding of competences in the economy and assessments of the development process by the education employers concerning the reform options, individual self-monitoring and the point system will be empirically taken into consideration.

It is controversial whether vocational basic and continuing education is substitutable or complementary. This report approaches the issue from an entrepreneurial perspective with a special focus on company sizes and provides empirical results on the basis of the IAB-Betriebspanel (representative employer survey). The valuations of a bivariate probit model also indicate the dependency of complementary and substitutional correlations on the individual company size.

Education in the Economic Culture. An Analysis of Approaches in Educational Policy of the Council of Europe and the EU Considering the Discussion of Culture and Economic Orientation

The European Union and the Council of Europe play an important role for educational policy in Europe. Education is meant to promote European identity as well as the European Economic Area. This text explores the priorities of the Council of Europe’s and the European Union’s educational concepts in the timeframe of 1994-2003 regarding their ideas of society and of dealing with diversity in Europe and within European societies. It will be discussed how the educational concepts locate themselves within the two dimensions of culture- and economy-oriented education. The Council of Europe, which has been established as an intergovernmental organisation for the promotion of peace, shows a more culture-oriented educational concept whereas the concept of the EU, which was built as a supranational organisation for economic cooperation, is more oriented towards the economy. Some coherence can be found within the social policy aspect of education. Considering the decreasing impact of the Council of Europe one should keep thinking about the future of a culture-oriented perspective on education.

The research memorandum for adult and continuing education (2000) focuses systematically on main research areas and contributes significantly to the systematization of the research landscape, the enhancement of possible collaborations and the provision of an overview of research achievements in the discipline for research sponsors as well as the public. Since 2007, adult educational research projects can be entered in a data base in accordance with the memorandum systematic. Acknowledging that projects are increasingly associated with various research areas gave the incentive for a closer analysis. For the first time, the insight into the research landscape provides the opportunity of differentiating the available classification.