Integration of a Course on Adult Education into the Curriculum
Integration of a Course on Adult Education into the Curriculum

Summary/Abstract: In our age of lifelong and lifewide learning, adult education has become an increasingly important part of vocational education and training (VET). Educating adults calls for special knowledge and competences, which most persons (including certified teachers) helping adults learn, do not possess, and they do that work as “amateurs” from the perspective of andragogy. The purpose of the article is to describe and reflect on the process how a course on adult education has been integrated into the curriculum of VET teacher training in Hungary. Comparative perspectives for innovators and policy makers, who are in similar situation, might be enhanced by reading about the Hungarian innovation. Traditional curricula of VET teacher training in Hungary did not include professional knowledge about adult education and lifelong learning till the middle years of the first decade of the millennium. But global and EU trends for lifelong learning and changes in the practical field of adult education inspired the innovators at VET teacher training institutes of Hungarian universities to elaborate and introduce adult education (andragogy) as a new, optional, and later compulsory course for pre-service VET teachers. A case study has been carried out during the middle years of the first decade of this millennium at a university to underpin the necessity of integration of a new course on adult education into the curriculum of VET teacher training. The present study focuses on the context, results and consequences of the process of the development of the new, effective curriculum about adult education for vocational teacher training.

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