Continuing Education in Germany. Contribution to UNESCO's International Conference on Adult Education (5th, Hamburg, Germany, July 1997).

Overview & Synopsis

This document reports on the aims, structure, delivery, and reform of continuing education in Germany. The following are among the topics discussed: aims, definitions, and areas of continuing education; structural principles, organizations, and competencies (institutional providers, cooperation, open access, public responsibility, innovative development, situation-oriented learning, quality assurance, program management, multimedia); special experience in further learning in connection with German unification (learning within a process of social transformation, problems in developing competencies); participation in continuing education (general trends, participant groups, participation in informal vocational continuing education, internal and external conditions affecting participation); adult educators and their qualifications and training; and current reform efforts (eliminating marginalization, supporting self-directed living and learning, overcoming separations between general and vocational continuing education, using new technologies, orienting the continuing education sector to the employment crisis, developing a learning society). Concluding the document are 70 footnotes. (MN)