Editorial

The great questions on how to handle complex and often contradictory demands placed on teaching/learning situations remain more topical than ever. What is more: Have the power relationships within teaching/learning processes merely been transformed instead of abolished as a consequence of a "new learning culture"? This issue of The Austrian Open Access Journal for Adult Education (Magazin erwachsenenbildung.at - Meb in German) deals with issues of didactics and thus with the heart of professionalism of adult educators. It focuses its attention on a core task of didactic action that has almost vanished from the didactic discourse - i.e., the imparting of the subject matter to the learner - and analyses the emancipatory potential of the competence concept. This issue seeks out collective ideas of teaching and didactic action in general adult education organisations, examining how practical experience and research findings must interact in order for professionalism to develop in adult education. What are the benefits of case-based learning? Of psychodrama? What would participative didactics look like? How can didactics be taught? With a number of contributions from the academic world and from practice, the present issue of Meb attempts to apply a practice-oriented and critical approach to didactics, ask new questions and bring old issues back into the limelight.