Division for Adult Education

The Division for Adult Education was originally founded as the Committee for Adult Education at a 1971 meeting at Goethe University Frankfurt. As an academic association, it is part of the German Educational Research Association (GERA). The GERA, established in 1964, brings together educational scientists involved in research and teaching, and currently has around 3,600 members. The Division for Adult Education presently has almost 500 members, making it the sixth-largest of the 14 GERA divisions. The annual division conference takes place every September at different locations, usually universities. A selection of refereed papers is published afterwards in the book series of the division.

Adult education researchers work and publish on theoretical and applied questions of adult and continuing education, covering in breadth and depth topics from general, cultural and political adult education to vocational education and in-company training. Research methods training for the next generation of researchers is supported via yearly method workshops as pre-conference to the main conference. Young researchers are honored by a poster prize at the annual conference.

Doctoral candidates, post-doctoral researchers, and those working on or having completed a habilitation are employed mainly at universities, as well as at non-university research institutes such as the German Institute for Adult Education and the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training. A range of bachelor’s and master’s degree programmes in adult education are on offer across Germany, with various names and focuses. Graduates work in adult education centres (Volkshochschulen), in-company personnel development, cultural institutions such as museums and libraries, charitable organizations, advisory services, educational institutions run by employers’ organizations and trade unions, political administrations, commercial institutions, service institutions, as freelancers, and much more.

The board and chair of the division are elected every two years and are made up of four representatives: one chairperson and three deputies.

The division keeps a mailing list for sending information out to members. This is used predominantly for membership administration, as well as for notifying members about e.g. vacant professorial posts. To minimize the amount of emails, there is also the mailing list komm-eb. This list is not moderated and is used by division members and other interested individuals to share general information (about conferences, job advertisements, publications etc.).

To sign up to the mailing list, please send a blank email from the relevant address to komm-eb-subscribeErziehung@listserv.dfnwissenschaft.de. This and further information can be found at https://www.listserv.dfn.de/sympa/info/komm-eb.

Division membership

To join the Division for Adult Education, membership of the GERA is required. In exceptional cases it is possible to request to work with the division as a co-opted member without being a member of the GERA. Co-opted members do not receive the journal “Erziehungswissenschaft” and have no voting rights according to the association statutes. Information about regular membership types can be found in the statutes.

Chair

Prof. Dr. Katrin Kraus
Universität Zürich
Institut für Erziehungswissenschaft
Kantonsschulstrasse 3
CH-8001 Zürich
katrin.kraus@ife.uzh.ch

Prof. Dr. Matthias Rohs
Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität
Fachgebiet Pädagogik
Erwin-Schrödinger-Straße
67663 Kaiserslautern
matthias.rohs@rptu.de

New map Karte (work in progress)