Von dem 24.-27. September 2025 fand die 11. Konferenz der European Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA) an der Charles University in Prag statt. Die Professur für Weiterbildung und lebenslanges Lernen war dort mit Beiträgen in einem Symposium als Teil des ESREA-STREAM Network vertreten. Sabine Schmidt-Lauff hat – als Gründungsmitglied des STREAM Networks (siehe etwa hier) – das Symposium mit dem Titel „SpaceTime Accents“ – Complex Times and Challenging Spaces: Reflections on Dialogical Shifts in Critical Service Learning Approaches, Continuing Education Guidance, and Hybrid Learning Spaces“ geleitet.
Das Symposium vereint die Schnittstelle von Erwachsenenbildung und Lernen im Kontext dialogischer Veränderungen in einer mediatisierten, globalen Gesellschaft. Dabei stehen zwei zentrale Phänomene im Fokus: Zum einem Globalisierung mit ihren eigenen je spezifischen interkulturellen Einflüssen sowie zum anderen die Mediatisierung mit Blick auf die fortschreitende Digitalisierung im Kontext von informellen, non-formalen wie auch formalen Lern- und Bildungsprozesse. Ebensolche Veränderungen können zu komplexen Transformationen führen, die Macht, Solidarität, Gemeinschaft, Identität und Virtualität betreffen und diese in ihrer gesellschaftlichen wie auch individuellen Bedeutsamkeit tangieren.
Die Beiträge des Symposiums untersuchen entlang der Dimensionen von Zeit und Raum – sowie ihrer wechselseitigen Verwobenheit – die komplexen Verhältnisse zwischen Globalisierung und Mediatisierung im Kontext lern- und bildungstheoretischer Fragestellungen in internationaler Perspektive. Zeit, Raum und Rhythmus werden dabei als fundamentale dialogische Dimensionen menschlicher Bildungsprozesse verstanden, die nicht nur ein breites Spektrum an Potenzialen für gegenwärtige Lern- und Bildungsforschung eröffnen, sondern zugleich auch die Grenzen und Spannungsfelder dieser Forschungsbereiche sichtbar machen.
Das Symposium sowie die immanenten Beiträge sind wie folgt:
„SpaceTime Accents“ – Complex Times and Challenging Spaces: Reflections on Dialogical Shifts in Critical Service Learning Approaches, Continuing Education Guidance, and Hybrid Learning Spaces“
Sabine Schmidt-Lauff (HSU/UniBw H)
This symposium explores the intersection of adult education and learning in the context of dialogical shifts within our mediatized, global communicative society (cf. Großklaus, 1997; Lundby, 2014). Contemporary diagnoses of the current era underscore two particularly significant phenomena for adult education: a) globalization, characterized by intercultural and international influences (e.g. UIL, 2024), and b) mediatisation, evidenced by the digitalization of education (cf. Jütte & Wildemeersch, 2017; Robak et al., 2022). Both phenomena have led to transformative yet complex changes, encompassing issues of power, solidarity, community, identity, virtuality, etc.. These transformations are central to understanding the nature of dialogue in its relational sense (Simão, 2023). The symposium aims to address the bridging elements of the currently significant phenomena for adult education, globalization and mediatisation by focusing on temporal and spatial analyses (e.g., topological dynamics, Decuypere et al., 2022; chronotope power, Ritella et al., 2017).
Time, space, and rhythm are essential aspects and determinants in human processes and movements (cf. STREAM Network[1], ESREA, 2022), deeply embedded within the cultural norms of interaction, practices, and dialogue in education. These dimensions also shape „Educational Research and the Questions of Time“ (Cole et al., 2024). The rhetoric surrounding digital learning often emphasizes its potential to enhance the learning experience by offering learners the flexibility to engage at their convenience. However, this flexibility also presents challenges related to maintaining a sense of community and dialogue, which is critical for connection, understanding, interrelation, and commitment among learners and educators.
Key questions to be addressed in this symposium include: How are dialogues multilayered and influenced by intercultural temporal dynamics (e.g., accents; Levine, 2006) and the pervasive digitalization of education (Stalder, 2021)? How can different cultural conceptions of time, the rhythm (Alhadeff-Jones, 2023) or chronotope framework deepen our understanding of the dialogical impacts (Simão, 2023) on adult education?Time and space emerge as pivotal lenses for interpreting how dialogue in and through learning and education is shaped by intercultural and digital influences. Contributions will examine these dynamics through various perspectives: B. Bulugu’s work on intercultural dimensions, M. Rathmann’s insights on digital education guidance, and Chr. Hümmer and L. Breitschwerdt’s analysis of hybrid learning environments.
Time and learning among adult learners: a perspective from the context of Africa
Joseph Badokufa Bulugu (St. Augustine University Mwanza;Tanzania // University of Duisburg Essen; Germany)
The African perspective on time and temporality, for adult learning process, is substantive in connection with events (Mbiti, 1969) as it intertwines the present, past, and future through reflection on experiences to transform previous knowledge. Similarly, the Western conception asserts that time “is a relational concept that depends on a frame of references such as situation and historical context, personal experience and behaviour, social and cultural practices, norms and other similar factors” (Schmidt-Lauff, 2023). The guiding questions, 1. what is the time in relation to adult learning? 2. how does this conception contribute to adult learning process? helped to scrutinize the learning process of students in the St. Augustine University of Tanzania Service-Learning program (SAUT S-LP) through an interpretive analysis (Rowlands, 2005). SAUT S-LP is a replica of service-learning, a teaching and learning strategy that integrates community service with academic study, reflection, and analysis to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility and strengthen communities (National Commission on Service-learning, 2002). Through interpretive approach I contextualized Mbiti’s concept of time to identify and analyse students’ service-learning processes: identify and engage in community services, take notes of experiences, and carry-out critical reflections to develop new perspectives. The approach facilitates adult education and learning process (Mitchel, 2008). Similarly, SAUT S-LP witness that “service-learning offers a concrete example from the field of higher education and its embeddedness in the glo-cal community as well as its facilitation of adult learners” (Schreiber-Barsch et al., 2023, 92). Therefore, use of time though organized events and reflection leads to learning.
Exploring the Temporal and Spatial Dimensions of Digital Continuing Education Guidance through the Lenses of Life-Developing Bildung
Marie Rathmann (HSU/UniBw H; Germany)
Digital continuing education guidance, as a specific form of dialogical guidance practice, aims to address biographical challenges and subjectively significant problems through reciprocal learning processes (Kinshuk, 2016; Schmidt-Lauff & Rathmann, 2024). In doing so, such dialogical practices contribute to life-developing education in terms of Bildung (Faulstich, 2003; Lerch & Weitzel, 2023) by targeting specific groups within digital environments (Käpplinger, 2020). Through media-mediated formats such as chat and telephone guidance, forums, or information platforms, advice seekers engage in ‘access-expanding’ (Robak, 2022) dialogues with both themselves and advisors in a relational manner. This potential is made possible by low-threshold, flexible, and on-demand access at any time and location, facilitated by a single click or easy termination of use (‘easy in-easy out’; Engel, 2019). As such, both spatiality and temporality are valuable resources for digital guidance.
This presentation will discuss findings from a past digital continuing education platform, which was operated by Germany’s Federal Office for Education and Research. From a document-analytical perspective on digital documents (Wein, 2020), this digital guidance platform was analyzed in relation to life-developing Bildung. Specifically, I will examine the results of temporal and spatial dimensions of digital continuing education guidance through the lens of life-developing Bildung. Furthermore, I will interpret these findings within the dialogical relationship between advice seekers and digital mediatization. The outcomes demonstrate and offer an outlook on how digital guidance addresses individuals‘ biographical development and diverse lifeworlds, fostering self-reflexivity and offering new perspectives on one’s relationship with oneself and society through dialogical guidance practices (Koller, 2017).
Time phenomena in synchronous hybrid learning spaces
Design implications for higher and adult education
Christina Hümmer & Lisa Breitschwerdt (Julius Maximilian University Würzburg; Germany)
The thoughtful integration of digital technologies in the design of educational formats is becoming increasingly important in international adult education (UIL, 2022). Hybrid learning spaces as one format, in which learners participate in educational offers online and on-site synchronously, have so far been discussed primarily in the context of spatial approaches (Bülow, 2022; Grabensteiner, 2024; Hümmer et al. submitted). However, there appear to be specific specialities in synchronous hybrid learning spaces in connection with the subjective perception of time of online and on-site participants and the collective time practices of learners and lecturers that have yet to be researched (Schmidt-Lauff et al., submitted; Schwarz et al., 2020). Accordingly, the presentation addresses the questions of how time is perceived in synchronous hybrid learning spaces by learners and the lecturer and how collective time practices are negotiated in dialogue between the lecturer and the learners. Using an explorative praxeologically oriented approach (Bohnsack, 2018), perceptions of time and collective time practices are explored in the course of a secondary analysis (Hughes & Tarrant, 2020) of interview data with learners and lecturers in different (international) synchronous hybrid learning spaces in higher education from the German research project DigiTaKS* collected between 2023 and 2024. The analysis can provide orientation not only for higher education, but also for adult education, in which synchronous hybrid learning spaces are gaining importance (Nørgård, 2021; Echarti et al., 2023), as to how these can be designed and conducted successfully from a temporal point of view.
Weitere Informationen zu der 11t ESREA triennal conference: https://esrea2025.ff.cuni.cz/
Letzte Änderung: 15. Oktober 2025