Diesseits und jenseits des Zweiten Bildungsweges. Zur Entwicklung formaler Erwachsenenbildung in Österreich

Formal continuing education for adults leading to a recognized qualification is a phenomenon whose quantitative and qualitative significance is underestimated. In Austria, national perceptions confront internationally established definitions of formal adult education. In this article, the authors argue that formal continuing education in Austria should be placed in a broader international context. To do this, the paper follows a typology of formal adult education developed by the authors which distinguishes between seven organizational fields. It discusses three specific fields - (formal) basic education, the second chance education and part-time university education for working students and university education for non-traditional students - and their recent developments (from roughly 1996 to 2010) in Austria. It is apparent from this discussion that all three of the fields of formal adult education under investigation are subject to great changes that have several things in common: expansion, i.e. new provisions, an increasing number of participants and the transformation of existing provisions.