The report presents first results of a study dealing with the whereabouts of former participants of literacy classes. Assuming courses of adult education have a beginning and an end, the authors pursue the phenomena of participants sojourning permanently at adult education courses. Taken data material into account, the reconstruction of possible reasons for staying in the courses finally leads to the demand for an initial consulting – analogical to the starting and learning consultation in the …
The article focuses on guidance in adult education as a type of institutional talk. Multiple data sources were collected through a comparative case study of two providers to examine how the institutional contexts influenced the guidance. On the one hand the providers define the subjects of their guidance service and their selection of consultants is based on the content knowledge. Also the providers pursue institutional goals with their guidances. On the other hand the guidance-seekers have the…
The study Competencies in Later Life (CiLL) provides for the first time representative data regarding the competencies of older people between the age of 66 to 80 years in three different domains: literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments. It is shown that there are significant differences between people with different qualification, but also between people of different birth cohorts. Despite major qualification differences between men and women, there are no signi…
Can the benefit derived from a course in further education be measured? Which methodological considerations are to be taken into account? It must be defined first of all which indicators are supposed to indicate the benefit. Evaluators and stakeholders must agree on set points. Data have to be collected using the methods of qualitative as well as quantitative research. Under evaluation aspects, anecdotic evidence has no value. At the end of the article, the author sums up four basic methods of …
Vocational continuing education by gainfully employed persons – the explanatory power of activity-related features for continuing education behaviour Socio-demographic, company and employment data is often used to explain continuing education behaviour of individuals. Even though continuing education needs arise directly in the job context, job-related aspects are less frequently taken into account – not least due to the availability of data. This has been made possible, however, by a repres…
The authors take the model of reproduction contexts, which has been developed by Josef Schrader in order to systematize the adult education sector, as a point of departure to discuss the possibilities of its empirical transfer. Based on the re-analysis of structural data of adult education institutions the problems of transfer of a theoretically developed model are explored. They conclude by outlining impulses for further discussions.
The National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) reflects upon adult learning from the perspective of a life profile. The article describes the system and methodological approach of the NEPS with a special focus on the group of adults. The education and employment history as well as the consequent competence development of the adult working age population is analyzed. Overall, 60,000 people are surveyed in the NEPS including more than 11,000 adults. First data is already available to the expert publ…
Non-Participation in Work-based Training in Europe. Results of a Field Study CVTS3 After a review of theories and empirical results concerning enterprise-based continuing training, results of the enterprise survey CVTS3 are discussed with a focus on training abstinence. It is shown that most non-training enterprises do not see a need for training. Public financing measures for the promotion of continuing training are likely to be less efficient for these enterprises, while awareness campaign…
Continuing education at schools of higher learning – data on developments in the context of the Bologna process Wide-ranging, different and at the same time diverging factors are having an impact on schools of higher learning, causing uncertainty among staff as well as institutional insecurity. This also goes for scholarly continuing education. In general it would appear that there is a trend towards commercialisation of universities linked with a growing autonomy of sub-units, faculties and…
Continuing education and justice The question as to the connection between education and justice has always been important, even before education was established as a functioning sub-system of society. This applies in a similar manner to the sub-field of “continuing education”. The REPORT examines different approaches to the difficult topic of justice and the required linkage between a discussion based on standards and norms and empirical data (which is too unreliable). The articles especially…
