The growing importance of lifelong learning and adult education appears to be a generally accepted fact. Less well known, on the other hand, are the causes, conditions, forms and types of development in all their variety as well as the changing trends and options for solutions to be observed at different levels. This situation requires broad, intensive and sustained empirical research on adult and continuing education. This Research Memorandum – commissioned by the Section for Adult Education a…
The project set out during its first stage in 1999 to produce an overview of available data on continuing education/adult education in Europe. For this purpose, it was necessary to concentrate on what is available on the Internet, focusing on an examination of the texts, tables and graphics in EURYBASE, run by the Information Network on Education in Europe (EURYDICE). The EURYBASE data were collated in a synoptic overview. The information was supplemented by data from European countries outside…
The study Competencies in Later Life (CiLL) provides, for the first time, information about central basic competencies of older adults. In doing so, two research approaches are combined. First, CiLL extends the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) to the age group 66 to 80 and analyses correlations between socio-demographic factors and basic competencies assessed with the PIAAC instrument. Second, a qualitative research part shows subjective opinions of …
The report presents central findings of the PIAAC Study (»Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies«) conducted by the OECD and provides first estimates about its significance for adult education. Although PIAAC cannot offer any information about the correlation between causes and effects. However, it is reasonable to increase basic educational endeavours and extend the programmes for groups in danger of social exclusion. Finally, research tasks are pointed out.
In today’s societies literacy is regarded as the prerequisite for participating in the professional and private spheres of everyday life. It is regarded as a human right, a tool for personal empowerment and a tool to influence the behaviour of individuals, families and communities. Despite the international consensus that literacy skills determine opportunities and provide access to today’s information-based societies, many adults in both industrialized and developing countries find themselves …
Serving oneself. The new voluntary work and the role of full-time educationalists People’s own learning and development motives play a more important role in the “new voluntary work” than before. This article relates subjective descriptions by volunteers of the learning motives underlying their commitments and adopts a profession-oriented theoretical perspective to relate these to a strategy of support for volunteers by full-time educationalists, referred to as learning and development supp…
Boundless work, bounded adult education? Setting out from the point of an interdisciplinary work research project on the basis of two empirical case studies it is worked out in which way current modernisation processes are referred back to on learning- and educational processes of staff.
Although adult educators are inevitably confronted with ethical problems in their work, they have not yet developed a code of professional ethics to guide them and justify their actions both to themselves and others. One possible strategy to intensify the discourse on professional ethics, the author suggests, may be to interlink the debates on professional ethics and professionalisation.
