Diversity management is a popular management approach. It promises to allow diversity in organisations and thus to appreciate people for what they are. It undertakes to recognise different points of view, ideas, abilities and potentials; not to standardise cultural variety but to reinforce it. For adult education, this concept seems highly promising. After all, one claim of educational management is to promote personality development and personal progress in a business context. However, critica…
Learning at the workplace – an “intimate” event The author takes the example of two female employees with a background of migration to show how strongly adults’ motivation to learn and their learning decisions are influenced by personal, deeply private motivations, even when they are pushed into learning by an external influence, as is often the case in companies. The theoretical basis on which the author interprets the case examples in the light of the “intimacy of lifelong learning” is th…
Pioneers from the Islands - National Qualifications Framework in England, Scotland and Ireland This article looks into the genesis and structure of the qualifications frameworks in England, Scotland and Ireland, compares them and concludes with notes to be taken into account for developments in Germany. The qualifications frameworks described, which are considered the forerunners of the EQF, have improved connections between the educational sectors. Their recognised benefit is the transpare…
Competence profiles for adult educators - European perspectives on the occasion of the EQF discussion One important piece of groundwork for the EQF debate in the adult education profession is to explore relevant competence profiles. In the run-up to a European conference, as part of an EU-funded project, profiles of this type in the countries of Europe were studied, compared and checked to discover whether they could be linked in to the Qualifications Framework. The article, originally publi…
From the principle of the regulated occupation to the supremacy of certification: fields of conflict en route to the German qualifications framework (DQR) This article addresses the central difficulties observed in the search for consensus during the current development of a national German qualifications framework (Deutscher Qualifikationsrahmen, DQR). As well as the difficulty in blending in the German national “dual system” of vocational training with the EQF, the main difficulties identi…
