Prof. Dr. Silke Schreiber-Barsch
What excites you about adult learning and education?
"To contribute towards opening up and making possible lifelong and lifewide choices, pathways and bridges back and forth, across and beyond each adult's lifelong learning biography! To be able to benefit from such lifelong learning infrastructures is, for sure, not something to be taken for granted. Therefore, as adult educators, we are asked to take this responsibility for ensuring the necessary societal and political framework, the professional background for becoming an adult educator and for an on-going development of the professional expertise, for giving guidance to institutions and organizations within the landscape of infrastructures as well as for empowering and guiding adult learners through their learning biography. "
Why did you choose to do research in the field of adult learning and education?
"Learning is always deeply embedded in both, knowledge and experience from practice AND research. Taking this into account, I have always been intrigued by taking the existing body of knowledge not as granted, but by testing its limits and premises, by comparing diverse perspectives, by arguing in line with the German concept of Bildung in its wide, reflective and democracy-founded sense, and by finding not yet existing or different answers to questions of lifelong learning."
Silke Schreiber-Barsch, PhD., is Professor in Adult and Further Education at University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Moreover, she has been appointed as Research Associate at the Centre for Higher and Adult Education, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
- international and comparative adult education
- lifelong learning
- issues of participation and social inclusion / exclusion
- global citizenship education
- adult education and disability
CG9: Adult learning and education for all?! Issues of inclusion in the limelight
Co-Moderator: Jessica Kleinschmidt & Lukas Eble
The ideology of social inclusion represents one of adult education’s leading leitmotivs, claiming to provide education for all—and especially for some across adult education’s histories worldwide. However, in particular since the mid-2000s, due to e.g. the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), inclusion as terminology and conceptual approach has increasingly been used to focus on the context of disability and impairment. This has strongly intensified the quest for a better accessibility to adult learning and education (ALE). Yet, what learning means in the context of disability/impairment, how it is framed in a nation-state architecture and in ALE institutional settings, and how it is experienced in a certain geographical place and at a given time are very likely to vary.
Taking this as a point of departure, the comparative group will elaborate commonalities and differences of accessibility to ALE. Disability/impairment will serve as the main lens of analysis; nonetheless, intersections with further categories will also be considered according to the multi-layered features of inclusive adult education (Schreiber-Barsch & Rule, 2021, p. 553). Whereas students are welcomed to focus their analysis on the micro-level of accessibility to ALE, practitioners enrich the comparative group with their unique knowledge and experience with regard to the meso-level of institutional settings and strategies of accessibility. The outcome foresees a deeper understanding of the buzzword inclusion, an extended knowledge on analysing the multi-dimensional concept of inclusive adult education through a comparative lens and a widened experience on strategies of institutional accessibility.
For more information about the comparative group have a look at our programme!
- BENZ-GYDAT, M./PABST, A./PETERSEN, K./SCHMIDT, K./SCHMIDT-LAUFF, S./SCHREIBER-BARSCH, S. (2021): Erwachsenenbildung als kritische Utopie? Diskussionen um Mündigkeit, Gerechtigkeit und Verantwortung. Frankfurt/M.: Wochenschau Verlag. https://www.hsu-hh.de/wb/wp-content/uploads/sites/647/2021/01/Erwachsenenbildung_als_kritische_Utopie-.pdf
- NATÁLIA, A/ SCHMIDT-LAUFF, S./ DOUTOR, C./ CAMPOS, L. (2020): Contexts of Recognition of Prior Learning. A comparative study of RPL initiatives in Brazil, Portugal, and Germany. In. Despotovic, M. & Popovic, K. (eds.). Andragoske studije/Andragoical Studies, (2)2021 – Articles. Open Access: [15.06.2021] file:///C:/Users/schmidts/AppData/Local/Temp/AS_2020-2_04.pdf
- SCHMIDT-LAUFF, S. (2019): Learning towards the future – Rethinking temporal contingencies. In: Indian Journal of Adult Education, Vol. 80(3-4), p. 5-15. ISSN 0019-5006. Delhi (India)
