Controversies in Education Policy and the Tasks of Science.

Abstract

Does the science of adult education need a second "realistic turn" as has been called for in recent educational policy statements by practitioners in further education? There is a widespread impression that science is less directly engaged in educational policy than it was twenty years ago and that it is less concerned these days with the broader social conditions and with technical and economic changes. But there are also examples to the contrary: for instance, the working group for vocational further education started by Goers and Voigt,1 the discussion on the social development of adult education in the Adult Education Commission of the German Society for Educational Science,2 and inquiries into the problems of the new media (e. g., by Ahlheim, Faulstich, Knoll, Lisop, and Schiermann). But despite such lists, there has indeed been a perceptible shift in emphasis in the tasks the science of adult education sets for itself, and above all in its perspective: away from the macro-level and back to the subje...