Adult Education

Volkshochschulen (VHS) are adult learning centres founded on principles of liberal education and offering a range of programmes, including languages, general education and cultural learning. In addition, they increasingly provide vocational courses (EAEA, 2011). Since VHS are local institutions overseen by municipalities, they serve as community meeting points for neighbours to interact and build relationships and trust. The approximately 900 adult education centres in Germany offer around 700,000 events a year – courses and lectures, study trips and excursions. With around nine million participants, adult education centres are the largest provider of general adult education in Germany (DVV, 2011).

Yo, Si Puedo (Spanish for Yes, I Can) is a low-cost mass education programme that involves relevant government and non-government agencies and actors to promote literacy among adults. As of 2014, Yo, Si Puedo helped over 6 million people in 29 countries to acquire basic literacy (Boughton & Durnan, 2014).

Curriculum GobALE (CG) is a modularized and competency-based framework curriculum for the training of adult educators worldwide. It is initially aimed at institutions and organizations in the area of adult education that wish to ensure that the qualification level of their educators satisfies professional standards. As a quality-assuring reference framework, Curriculum GlobALE provides an international standard that also addresses other interested specialist audiences and education policy decision-makers beyond the level of adult education institutions (DVV International, 2015). The curriculum is built on three general principles: competency orientation; action and participant orientation; and sustainability of learning.

The Global Report on Adult Learning and Education (GRALE) is a monitoring tool built to track the Belém Framework for Action (BFA), adopted by 144 UNESCO Member States at the Sixth International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA VI) in 2009.