In its research and teaching, the Adult Education department focusses on the conditions and possibilities of educational processes over the course of a lifetime.
On the one hand, the perspective is focussed on biographical processes and subjective appropriation strategies, which are particularly effective in transitional phases. Here, lifelong learning can be both a promise and a threat.
On the other hand, our attention is focussed on the institutional framing and professional-pedagogical support of educational and mediation processes over a lifetime. Here, too, social participation is realised and social inequality is reproduced in a special way at the interfaces of educational transitions.
The focus is therefore primarily on the reciprocal mediation between education and gainful employment throughout the life course, an ongoing individual and social coping task that is characterised by continuous change.
The Adult Education/Continuing Education department was headed by Prof Dr Beatrix Niemeyer-Jensen until 2023.