Editorial

Editorial
The principle of learning throughout a person’s entire life is associated with not only a pluralization of learning contexts and educational spaces that goes far beyond classical places of learning, learning topics and temporal definitions but also an increase in the significance of informal learning processes. The digital transformation on everyone’s lips has enlarged the discussion of new learning contexts and made it more dynamic so that the current focus is mainly on digital forms of learning spaces. So what makes a "place" an actual place of learning, where education can unfold in the sense of a reflective penetration of the world? Guided by theory, based on research and workable in practice, the current issue of The Austrian Open Access Journal on Adult Education (Magazin erwachsenenbildung.at, Meb) plumbs the depths of how the territory between the dissolution of boundaries and localization and between plurality and specificity is currently organised, what dimensions of place and space open up for learning and educational spaces, what opportunities – as well as dangers and limits – for adult education and continuing education are associated with this pluralization. At the heart of the discussion is the subject with its multiple life-world experiences and learning opportunities – and thus a wide variety of places of learning and educational spaces. The articles themselves cover a wide range of topics including the social space concept of Jane Addams’s Hull House in the 19th century, reserves as spaces for learning, experiencing and experimenting, maker spaces and hackerspaces as well as the "Escape Café". It examines not just whether venerable universities are worth protecting but also whether adult education has not already fallen into a "space trap". (Ed.)