The ageing population presents a series of policy challenges, for which our current three phase model of the lifecourse is unhelpful, especially by overlooking the changing nature of the “third age”. Encouraging people to stay longer in paid work is a key priority for Government, and training is often advocated as a way of encouraging this. This paper summarises the demographic challenge and presents a proposal for rethinking the lifecourse. It then describes the findings of a project, which ex…
A video-study of language courses in adult education analyses the transformation of a learning side into a pedagogical space. The definition of pedagogical space is linked to the theory of social space. Space is thus viewed as an arrangement and perception between human beings and social goods. This recasting of social space as a pedagogical space specifies social space to include two additional elements: the representation of knowledge and pedagogical media. For this study, the transformation …
In adult education, fields of activity have lost their strict boundaries: administrative employees also perform pedagogical work – such as counselling, for instance – and full-time pedagogical employees also have to handle administrative work – e.g. in project management. Both qualitatively and quantitatively, administrative employees play an important role in the pedagogical functioning of institutions of adult education, although this factor is often neglected in both research and measures of…
As a priority of education policy Lifelong Learning implies flexible individual learning pathways in different settings. Within the demographic change and the demand of higher skills higher education qualifications become increasingly important to reach employment, why higher education institutions need to open up against new target groups. This article focuses on further education offered by higher education institutions and intends to give a picture of the current demand and supply. Empirical…
Sites and trajectories of learning disconnected from schooling and traditional training are discussed against the background of a new scientification of work related to the shift towards an information technological mode of production. This scientification is rooted in a new relation of theory and practice at work. Accordingly, workers play a new strategic role in work processes: they have to optimize procedures, define and search for reasonable objectives, reflect on methods and strategies of …
This article provides an overview of the debate on learning environments and learning locations within adult education research; the authors use a historical review of main research topics in order to understand current learning environments and recent theoretical and empirical discussions. The term of learning environments or learning locations has been introduced into research on adult education in the 1970ies; since this time, each following decade can be characterized by several specific re…
The following article focuses on the debate on organizational learning from an adult-educational point of view. In most approaches to organizational learning the members of an organization are regarded as the main drivers of organizational learning processes. However, such approaches do not systematically incorporate important presumptions of learning-theory, although this promises to create a better understanding of adult-educational experiences within organizations. Hence, the article present…
