Die Bedeutung von Alphabetisierung und Grundbildung in nationalen wie internationalen Bildungsdebatten ist unbestritten. Die in Deutschland angelaufenen Projekte werden im Jahr 2009 erste Arbeitsergebnisse vorstellen können. Die Beiträge dieses Heftes werden vornehmlich einen Beitrag zur Theorieentwicklung leisten und damit Grundlagen für die weitere Forschung auf diesem Gebiet schaffen.
Nach der Veröffentlichung eines Entwurfs für den Deutschen Qualifikationsrahmen (DQR) im November 2010 befindet sich die Diskussion in einer kritischen Phase. Die Weiterbildung findet zunehmend Interesse am Thema und hat Einflussmöglichkeiten erschlossen. Aber ihr bleibt nicht viel Zeit, in der DQR-Diskussion Position zu beziehen. Ihre Optionen im bildungspolitischen Machtspiel müssen offengelegt und reflektiert werden. Hierzu leistet das Heft einen wichtigen Beitrag. Im Rahmen einer Umfrage b…
Federal law as envisaged in the socalled Hartz paper provides for the introduction of education vouchers. Is political education concerned? Against this background, the author explores funding structures of political education on the federal as well as on the Länder plane, of municipalities and foundations. Her verdict is disenchanting: many institutions of political education, especially the very small ones, are facing their end. This is corroborated by two statements of experts from the field…
Vocational continuing education is becoming more significant in modern employment biographies. A growing range of work-based study programmes and the recent opening tendency for persons holding vocational qualifications attracts attention to universities as providers of continuing education. Still, academic formats play a comparatively small role in the market of continuing education. The report explores the reasons for the low acceptance of academic continuing education. For this purpose, 72 p…
The rising importance of continuing education in the knowledge-based society is undisputed, but the broad organisational and legal area of continuing education has not been surveyed adequately to date in statistical terms. This article provides an overview of the heterogeneous landscape of providers and explains the existing data situation. Following this, the problems associated with a separation between providers of vocational from general education are discussed. Finally, the current changes…
Strata, Class, Milieu. Reference strategies in research on continuing education 1957-2007 The author provides a longitudinal look at 50 years of research on participation in continuing education. After presenting some important publications from 1957 (Schelsky, Dahrendorf), he presents sociological reference strategies which were used in the respective time periods to explain the social structure: first strata and class, and then later – due to the influence of Bourdieus – the social milieu: H…
Justice and the right to continuing education Education opportunities are unfairly distributed. In the area, too, of continuing education there are disadvantaged groups of persons who especially have already suffered discrimination during their initial vocational education and training. The demand for equal opportunities which dates back to Aristotle and John Rawls implies that everyone who suffers as a result of insufficient or unsatisfactory results in their initial training should have a…
Gender skills for adult education Gender mainstreaming is a central maxim for political action all across Europe. However, little effect is yet to be felt in adult education. Where there is gender-sensitive adult education, this is still strongly oriented towards the differential approach. In view of participation rates in general and vocational adult education, and the division of interests within the segments, which is again gendered, the author speaks of a “doubly divided structure”. For …
Large parts of adult education are not being reached through relevant laws at all anymore. Thus a factual deregulation is the consequence. This loss of scope faces a growing provision profundity of those laws thar are tangent to the adult education area and that have been revised lately. The author draws attention to this ambivalent context by means of the most important legal basis of adult education: the adult education laws of the German states and the social statute book III (SGB III).
Already Max Scheler developed a functional definition of education. With Scheler, education is not only not opposed to usefulness, but even prerequisite for reaching certain aims at all. In terms of the postmodernist media and mass society the relationship between education and usefulness has to be reformulated. With reference to Lyotard, the author develops a concept of education as a regulative idea. Under these conditions, individuals are not expected to integrate themselves culturally into…
