Session Information
32 SES 05.5 PS, General Poster Session
General Poster Session
Contribution
The field of adult and continuing education is very heterogeneous in contrast to the primary, secondary and tertiary education sector. There are various European approaches to categorize adult and continuing education (Sava, Nuissl & Lustrea, 2016). Basically the analytical differentiation between general adult education and continuing professional education is very common, practice however broadly addresses both aspects. Beside the formal and non-formal learning opportunities of adult and continuing education, the support of informal learning processes of adults is an important part of adult and continuing education (Europäische Kommission, 2000). Seen as one of the main instruments for formal and informal learning, digital media can provide social functions of adult and continuing education: the qualification according to professional capacity, the individualization e.g. in the form of information- and design competencies as well as the democratization as cultural and political participation (von Hippel, 2011). As digitalization in adult and continuing education has hardly been explored so far, this research project „Digitalization in Adult and Continuing Education “, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, is focusing on criteria which determine the success factors of digitalization in adult and continuing education. The overall objective of the study is the analysis, development and evaluation of shaping concepts to provide the digitalization of educational opportunities in institutions and organizations of adult and continuing education based on the results of previous analysis. An essential part will be to identify the success criteria of digitalization processes in institutions and organizations of adult and continuing education against the background of heterogeneous institutional and organizational structure conditions. To take all aspects of adult and continuing education and also of media literacy into consideration, these two participating departments collaborate interdisciplinary in the project.
The following questions are at the core of the project:
- Which measures for digitalization can be identified in the institutions and organizations? Which aims are related to the measures? Which experiences have the institutions gained with those measures?
- Which interdependencies between different levels (society, institution, organization, learning opportunities, staff, learners) with regard to driving and inhibiting factors of digitalization development can be identified in the adult education/continuing education?
- Which development requirement for the promotion of digitalization in the adult and continuing education can be identified on which levels? Which concepts for the promotion of digitalization in and with the institutions of adult and continuing education can be made together on the basis of theory and empiricism? Which change processes can be suggested with those measures?
A number of working objectives derive from the above-named research questions:
- Analyzing all existing digital documents and contents of the practice partners within the levels and establish a first categorization of aims, measures and experiences for digitalization in institutions and organizations of adult and continuing education. This procedure should also give some hints for relations between the levels.
- Forming and evaluating concepts for digitalization in and with the institutions and organizations of adult and continuing education.
- Determining necessary development requirements for the promotion of digitalization on the respective levels for the practice partners.
As the study assumes that the success criteria for digitalization of the education sector are based on different levels the analysis of the digitalization processes uses a multi-level perspective (Egetenmeyer & Schüßler, 2014). Those levels – society, institution, organization, learning opportunities (formal, non-formal, informell), staff and participants – stand in a correlation with each other.
One vital influence on the development of the digitalization in adult and continuing education is the size of the institutions, the close networking as well as the association structure in Germany.
Method
The data collection and analysis follow a mixed-methods approach (Creswell at al., 2003) with interviews and questionnaires at two different times of measurement. The samples are taken in the fields of general adult education and vocational education. Methodologically, the present study uses the approach of Critical Communicative Method (CCM) (Gómez et. al., 2011). Furthermore, the aim of CCM is to initiate social and political changes through reflexive research and thus represents the pivotal foundation of this study. The reflexive component will be achieved through intensive dialogs with the subjects and includes a survey, an evaluation and a data interpretation. To explore the levels of the multi-level perspective for analysing professionalization in adult and continuing education (Egetenmeyer & Schüßler, 2014), the characteristics of the several levels are determined by secondary literature and are compared with results of the first discussions with associates from the umbrella organizations. On the whole 60 interviews will be conducted and are spread in equal parts upon the three cooperating umbrella organizations and six related sub-organizations. The characteristics of the participants and the associates are collected quantitatively. Therefore, the study focuses on perceived needs and requirements of society (BMBF, 2014), the transformation of the structures of institutions and organizations (Schemmann & Seitter, 2014), changes of the digital offers for formal, informal and non-formal learning (Tulodziecki et. al., 2010), the beliefs in terms of media education and the educational settings of the staff (Herzig et al., 2015; Tiede et. al., 2015). At the time of presentation, the interviews will be conducted. Afterwards this qualitative part of the research evolves out of focus groups and expert interviews with representatives of associations and organizations at two times of measurement. The quantitative measurement of convictions and self-efficacy in the context of media will be conducted with the M³K measurement instrument (Herzig et al., 2015). Furthermore, the institutional and organizational facilities as well as the usage of digital media are examined by adapting the existing and standardized research instruments (mpfs, 2017). The collected data will be evaluated with descriptive and inferential statistics. Collected data of accompanying webinars such as audio files will be transcribed and analyzed together with the documents of the umbrella organizations within a qualitative content analysis with an inductive and deductive coding method. They will be evaluated and interpreted in a generating way based on categories. (Mayring, 2015).
Expected Outcomes
The results of study should enlighten, how digital media are designed and used in order to achieve the pedagogical goals of adult and continuing education. Furthermore, what goals should be accomplished in terms of adult education and what questions arise with regard to the use of media in adult and continuing education (Tulodziecki et. al., 2010). In addition, the question comes up, how can this be achieved in an appropriate form. This describes a basic competence of adults (European Commission, 2016) and an important condition of occupation. The interface between formal, non-formal and informal processes of learning will be analyzed to show all facets of digitalization by Specht et. al. (2013) with the focus on the organization. The expected results imply information about the goals, measures and experiences in terms of digitalization of institutions and organizations of the adult and continuing education. On this occasion, it is possible to identify the conditions of success and their interdependencies on the levels: society, institution, organization, offers, staff and participants. Based on these levels, a concept for the support of digitalization in organizations and institutions should be developed, implemented and evaluated. Moreover, particularly the unexpected side-effect that will be observed throughout the webinars will effectively help to achieve those goals. As a further outcome of the project, conference contributions and online-tutorials will be created as well as, for the purpose of dissemination, presentations will be held and articles will be published. For the development of design concepts as a part of adult and continuing education, the CCM is going to be combined with the approach of a theory-based development and evaluation of concepts for didactical actions (Tulodziecki et. al., 2014). The expected outcomes will not only contribute scientifically on national but also on European level.
References
BMBF (2014): Digitale Agenda 2014-2017. Bonn. BMBF. Creswell, J. W.; Plano Clark, V. L. (2003): Designing and conducting mixed methods research. Los Angeles: Sage. Egetenmeyer, R.; Schüßler, I. (2014): Academic Professionalisation in Master’s Programmes in Adult and Continuing Education: Towards an Internationally Comparative Research Design. In: Lattke, S.; Jütte, W. (eds.): Professionalisation of Adult Educators. International and Comparative Perspectives. Frankfurt. pp. 91-103. Europäische Kommission (2000): Memorandum über Lebenslanges Lernen. Brüssel. European Commission (2016): DigComp 2.0: The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens. Update Phase 1. The Conceptual Reference Model. Gómez, A.; Puigvert, L. & Flecha, R. (2011): Critical Communicative Methodology: Informing Real Social Transformation Through Research. In: Qualitative Inquiry, 17(3), pp. 235-245. Herzig, B.; Martin, A.; Schaper, N.; Ossenschmidt, D. (2015): Modellierung und Messung medienpädagogischer Kompetenz – Grundlagen und erste Ergebnisse. In: Koch-Priewe, B.; 39 Köker, A.; Seifried, J.; Wuttke, E. (eds.): Kompetenzerwerb an Hochschulen: Modellierung und Messung. Zur Professionalisierung angehender Lehrerinnen und Lehrer sowie frühpädagogischer Fachkräfte. Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, pp. 153-167. Mayring, P. (2015). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Grundlagen und Techniken (12., revised edition). Weinheim, Basel: Beltz. Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverbund Südwest (mpfs) (2012). JIM-Studie 2012 - Jugend, Information, (Multi-) Media. retrieved from http://www.mpfs.de/fileadmin/JIM-pdf12/JIM2012_Endversion.pdf [29.01.2019]. Sava, S.; Nuissl, E.; Lustrea, A. (2016): Adult Learning and Education: Current European Perspectives. In: Sava, S.; Novotný, P. (eds.): Researches in Adult Learning and Education: the European Dimension. Firenze: Firenze University Press, pp. 3-26. Schemmann, M. & Seitter, W. (2014): Weiterbildung in Hessen. Eine mehrperspektivische Analyse. Wiesbaden. Specht, M., Ebner, M., Löcker, C. (2013): Mobiles und ubiquitäres Lernen. Technologien und didaktische Aspekte. In: Ebner, M. & Schön, S. (eds.): Lehrbuch für Lernen und Lehren 41 mit Technologien. retrieved from http://l3t.eu/homepage/das-buch/ebook-2013/kapitel/lesen/o/id/113 [31.01.2019]. Tiede, J.; Grafe, S.; Hobbs, R. (2015): Pedagogical Media Competencies of Pre-Service Teachers in Germany and the United States of America: A Comparative Analysis of Theory and Practice. In: Peabody Journal of Education 90(4), pp. 533-545. Tulodziecki, G.; Herzig, G. & Grafe, S. (2010): Medienbildung in Schule und Unterricht. Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt. Tulodziecki, G.; Herzig, G. & Grafe, S. (2014): Medienpädagogische Forschung als gestaltungsorientierte Bildungsforschung vor dem Hintergrund praxis- und theorierelevanter Forschungsansätze in der Erziehungswissenschaft. In: Medienpädagogik. Zeitschrift für Theorie und Praxis der Medienbildung. retrieved from www.medienpaed.com/Documents/medienpaed/2014/tulodziecki1403.pdf [09.12.2017]. von Hippel, A. (2011): Erwachsenenbildung und Medien. In: Tippelt, Rudolf; von Hippel, Aiga (eds.): Handbuch Erwachsenenbildung/ Weiterbildung. Wiesbaden: Springer, pp. 687-706.
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