In dynamic knowledge societies that are determined by a rapid technological, vocational and social change, the significance of adult learning is increasing more and more. The challenges of „lifelong learning“ are thus gaining to an increasing extent in importance with regard to the maintenance of the individual „employability“ as well as with respect to the strategic competence as sustainable factors of economic success and social welfare. Compared with that, it is astonishing that the problematic nature of adequate teaching has remained rather underexposed. If „teaching“ is not only meant to be the direct instrumentalization of abstract processes of learning, but principally the sensitive arrangement of suitable learning environments and learning contexts, the promotion of specific, genuinely strategic-oriented forms of knowledge and competence as well as the authentic social and biographical mentoring of processes of learning, this will result in a broad gap of congruence of adequate procedures and procedural structures. In fact, the discussion about the so-called ‘e-learning’ has demonstrated new, more efficient opportunities of acquiring knowledge, the methodology itself is, however, still determined to an increasing extent by technocratically defined as well as by increasingly one-dimensional forms of mediation between learning contexts and the learning subject, which is merely considered to be a market-dependent rational actor and employee and not in its integral biography, which is defined as well by the social life context. The main problem with the transition from “teaching to learning” consists according to the thesis advocated hereby in that this will increasingly result in a falling apart of learning places and learning contents between the companies and their employees: Incompatibilities and de-ryhthmizations in the adaptation to new qualification requirements and vocational contents of knowledge arise from this. Both actors - the company as well as the employees – are, however, more than ever dependent upon one another in coping with the technical change and dynamisms of knowledge. While the company is in urgent need of the implementation of new knowledge and new competences, in order to be in a position to maintain its hold on the market, the same goes for its employees with regard to their „employability“ and their long-term income security. We are thus above all confronted with the problem that the modern arrangements of learning, mediation and integration have to be linked together systematically. Moreover, the lavishly integrated concepts of teaching and learning have to be stable for a long period of time and have to exhibit authentic company-cultural characteristics – such as for example a specific form of family friendliness, this contribution is particularly based upon. The problematic nature of the re-enrolment of mothers serves as an especially succinct example. Nowadays, four topics determine the area of conflict of teaching and learning: 1. The pedagogical prerequisite of coping with future learning requirements consists in a comprehension that is based upon partnership, of reciprocity and a basis of mutual interests between the company and the mother. 2. Learning guidelines cannot simply be imposed, but they raise questions regarding the functional and the subjective sense of the learning investment, in this case it is a matter of the usability of learning and of its personal “revenue”. 3. Nowadays, companies do not only have to comprehend themselves from an economic point of view as ‘learning organizations’, but above all also with regard to their social responsibility. 4. Modern vocational and company-internal learning arrangements have to provide a broader space to the interconnections of economic, social and biographical objectives in everyday work routine (for example the interaction between mothers and their superiors).

Vocational learning does not constitute a one-way-street, in which the employers can simply pre-determine their respective expectations of competence and qualification. Precisely from a pedagogical point of view, it constitutes of a complex process of comprehension and negotiation, which includes the interests and life-objectives of the mothers. This contribution is based upon two practical examples – the cultivation of workstations for mothers and a 24-month vocational and social accompanying program for mothers returning from their “family leave” or their “baby-break” back to work (Priority Program 24). The label of ‘family friendliness’ obliges companies as well as mothers to evaluate new forms of conversion between ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ in the sense of altered efficiency comprehensions and responsibilities.