European InfoNet Adult Education is a network providing journalistic information about current developments in adult education from European countries and the EU level.

LATEST NEWS

Rethinking Education, a strategy presented by the European Commission last November, calls for focusing on 'learning outcomes' – the knowledge, skills and competences that students acquire. The rapporteur of the European Parliament's (EP) Draft Report, Katarína Neveďalová (S&D, SK), defends adult education and lifelong learning.

The membership of the European Association for the Education of Adults – EAEA has elected a new Executive Board and President for the two-year term of 2013–2015. The new Board consists of adult education professionals from 12 different countries.

The experiment that should have been a prototype for a public-private partnership in the field of continuing academic education in Germany has lasted four years. Now, the Free University of Berlin (Freie Universität Berlin; FU) as the academic partner and the Klett Group as the private partner have pulled out of the funding body of the first state-recognised university for continuing education in Germany.

The Austrian Ministry of Education has called for an update of the definition of adult education in Austria. The challenging task was taken up by Austrian adult education researcher Elke Gruber. Gruber’s definition takes into account the recent developments in non-formal learning.

Deep economic recession and high unemployment have created a climate of social instability in Greece. Some impacts of this instability are expressed in phenomena of xenophobia and racist actions, unusual to the Greek social reality so far. In this situation a re-emphasis is necessary as concerns learning for citizenship. A number of projects in Greece based on The Learning by Design Framework have already had positive results.

The interrelationship between children's learning and parents' learning is important in two of the articles that we have chosen to highlight in this issue of the Newsletter. Eva Tanczos from Hungary reports on the Real Pearl Foundation, whose leader realized that educating the parents had to be an integrated part of educating the children of disadvantaged families. The European FEAST project aims at developing scientific literacy, Christina Gerlach explains. One way is workshops that can make parents informal science educators of their children.

The European Union is planning to set up an online information platform on adult education. The call for tenders has just been closed and work is to start in October.

Finally – that is the only word – finally, there is to be some sort of ‘virtual home’ for adult education in Europe. EPALE is designed to bring together all the insights, concepts and ideas that abound in European adult education and act as a platform for dialogue between experts that fits in with the standard means of communication used on the internet today.

Science and technology are not exactly key topics in European adult education projects. The European project FEAST – Facilitating Engagement of Adults in Science and Technology aims at making a contribution to the development of scientific literacy of adults, which will allow citizens to make informed decisions in the new society that heavily relies on a rapidly evolving science and technology scenario.