Governance structures and educational performance profiles in adult education organizations

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Karin Dollhausen; Professor Dr. Michael Schemmann
• Subject Area: Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism ; Education Systems and Educational Institutions
• Term: from 2016 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 316174824

In educational science there is a broad consensus that in all sectors of education, including the sector of adult education, the actors, forms of steering and coordination of action, thus educational governance has changed profoundly and that a new regime of educational governance is about to rise. Scholars in educational science underpin the influence of a new educational governance regime on professional pedagogical performance within adult education organizations and on the development of organizational performance profiles, i.e. the sum of all pedagogical learning opportunities and support services for learners, implemented for use by the organizations. However, it is still unclear, how the new educational governance regime touches the organizational level of educational performance and how the organizations react on new actor-specific expectations regarding the coordination of their educational performance. The project aims at widening the scientific knowledge on the empirical constitution of the new governance regime at the level of adult education organizations and its consequences regarding the development of educational performance profiles. The objectives of the project are: 1. identifying new actor constellations and forms of coordinating action between adult education organizations and other relevant actors, 2. reconstruction of conventions of action, activated by organizational representatives in order to react to different actor specific expectations regarding performance and coordination, 3. identifying typical leeways of action and decision at organizational level, this with regard to the development of organization specific educational performance profiles within the context of the new governance regime. The project applies a qualitative research design, with case studies in 9 adult education organizations, respectively German public adult education centers (Volkshochschulen). The empirical research applies episodical with pedagogical directors and representatives of the middle management of the organizations. In sum, 45 interviews will be analyzed under specific aspects. The selection of public education centres as field of research is based on the fact that the organizations are principally established in a field of multiple actors and a plurality of different, even divergent challenges concerning the development of their performance profile. So specifically in these organizations there can be assumed a high reflexivity towards and competence of the pedagogic personnel in managing challenges regarding the development of pedagogical performance profiles.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Matthias Alke