This report provides an overview of the standards between professional and organisational logic for adult education – from the perspective of funding and continuing educational organisations, education policy and research. It also summarises various strategies for improving teaching and training, and identifies outstanding questions. It also points out the role of teaching as a construct, which largely depends on the viewer’s perspective.
The planning of teaching and learning is a key task for teachers of adult and continuing education. This recurrent challenge demands situational decisions regarding objectives, contents, media and activities of teaching and learning, taking into consideration both the learner as well as organisational and spatial factors. However, empirical research indicates that these complex and interdependent decisions are often tackled insufficiently. Digital planning tools can be used to reduce the comple…
Erik Haberzeth issues a plea to make teaching the central focus of didactic activity once again. The problem with achieving successful good teaching, in his view, is not necessarily related to teachers devoting too little attention to existing specialised didactical knowledge. It is more important, rather, to make sure that didactics do not become self-absorbed and thereby impede the way to content rather than paving it. This does not mean that specialised didactics can generally speaking be di…
Constructivism as a legitimation for self-directed learning with new media? Constructivism does not seldomly only serve primarily the legitimation of current "teaching-learning-technologies". So the conclusion of "constructivism legitimizes self-directed learning and therefore learning with new media" in the media-didactical literature is wide spread. The present text shall investigate, whether these are logical conclusions or whether they are "short circuits". For this the relation of const…
Aspects of the “Established Outsider Figuration” in continuing vocational training Learning groups involving participants of different origins The main focus of the present paper is on continuing training courses attended by both indigenous and immigrant participants. What potential influences such participant structure on teaching may have is the subject of investigation. This reveals that in courses involving participants of mixed origin, under certain conditions, a constellation between …
The concept of competencies has expansive effects for the definition of goals, contents and methods in teaching. The orientation on competencies therefore is more than a didactic principle like active-learning or learner-centered instruction. Coming from a concept of competencies as a didactical category as well as an aim of teaching, we will argue, that a comprehensive theoretical approach is needed, which delivers a theoretical founded orientation for both the decisions on contents and the me…
The performance of education systems is significantly influenced by the quality of teaching/learning processes. On the basis of empirical research, the programme for evidencebased educational research also contributes to improving the quality of teaching/learning processes. Hereby, new requirements for the insight of educational research as well as for the accelerated transfer of research findings into politics and practice have been formulated. Currently, the programme is strongly criticised b…
Teachers and trainers can only act on what they notice. In line with use-inspired basic research, the question pursued in this book is how teachers’ and trainers’ competence to perceive, analyze, and diagnose situations of learning and instruction can be enhanced resulting in long-term effects. The present state of research with regard to adult education science’s professionalization discourse, teacher education research, competence as well as expertise research is drawn upon in order to gain a…
Working in small groups can be regarded as constitutive for learning with cases. Using the example of case-based “train the trainer courses”, this contribution focuses on cooperative learning processes in small groups regarding the contents of the conversation and discussion structure as well as the effects on the competence development of individual adult learners. The presented results provide an insight of the processes of situated, problem-based learning in small groups which are common in …
“Validpack” – new tool to validate the skills of adult educators The article describes how, as part of a European project, a validation tool has been developed to validate skills in adult education teaching. Validating adult educators' skills may be one step in the discussion concerning the professionalisation of adult education. There is a description of the aims of the tool, the competence framework it is based on, and the individual steps in the process. So that it can also be of advanta…
