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…
Adult education and its terminology This article focuses on the interaction between the history of ideas and adult education. The question of the disciplinary and the individual self-conception, which can be extended by an approach from the history of the understanding of concepts, is central to this consideration. After discribing the possible usage of general terminology it offers different perspectives and levels for adult educational analysis. As a conclusion it discusses to which extent…
Referred back to oneself. Reflexive modernisation and new learning requirements This article probes the relationship between our risk society, reflexive modernity and individual learning. First, social conditions are illuminated (with reference to Beck, Giddens and Lash) which force people to endure uncertainty (Mitscherlich and Marotzki) and gain critical ego strength. Next the author focuses attention on the reality of contemporary ways of dealing with demands, turning to findings from nar…
Participation in adult education and learning motivation In this introductory contribution firstly the history of the educational sociology of research in adult in Germany is reconstructed in keywords. The current discussion on social exclusion/inclusion is scetched here and further deepened in the following contributions of this book. In the final chapter of this contribution the results of an educational biographical study are presented. Here nine types of participation in adult education …
Research on learning - a retrospective The history of empirical research on adults’ learning reaches back until the twenties of the last century. This contribution evokes some interpretative research on the pedagogy of learning and teaching for adults. It seems that the adult education sciences’ disciplinary memory is underdeveloped as many instructive older analysis seem to have fallen into oblivion. Recent studies mostly don’t pay attention to the linkages and continuity of the questions. …
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…
Wie verhält sich Kompetenz zu Bildung und Qualifikation? Welches sind die Vor- und Nachteile einer Orientierung von Bildungsprozessen an Kompetenzen? Zur Beantwortung dieser Fragen richtet der Autor den Blick auf Steuerungsprozesse in der Bildungspolitik ebenso wie auf Nutzenpotenziale für die Lernenden.
Unter den Gesichtspunkten der wissenschaftlichen Verarbeitung, der Interaktion, der Bildungsintentionen und -interessen und der didaktischen Kooperation wird die Problemsituation von Theorie und Praxis der Erwachsenenbildung diskutiert.
This article aims at analyzing the consequences of using educational monitoring data for adult education research. Refering to the Statistics on German “Volkshochschulen” (Adult Education Centers) the advantages and challenges that the usage of educational monitoring data brings for research purposes are shown. This is made explicit by focussing on the research project “Governance structures and educational performance profiles in adult education organizations” (GLOW) and discussing the empiric…
