Projekt

Deutsch

Continuing higher education (referred to in the German-speaking context as wissenschaftliche Weiterbildung) can be situated within the Austrian higher education system as a dynamic field shaped by societal, economic, and technological transformation processes as well as by higher education policy steering impulses and institutional developments. It is characterized by institutional strategies, organizational forms, and orientations toward demand and needs. The central analytical interest of this dissertation is to examine how continuing higher education is constituted and transformed through the interplay of these factors.

The dissertation project is grounded in a fragmented state of research which, in the Austrian context, has focused primarily on provision structures, legal frameworks, and organizational developments, while theoretical approaches and analyses of interdependencies and impacts have received limited attention.

The theoretical framework draws on perspectives from adult and continuing education research as well as higher education research and incorporates organizational, governance-related, and profession-related approaches. Continuing higher education is described with regard to its dual embeddedness within the higher education and science system and its orientation toward demand, needs, and market dynamics.

Methodologically, the dissertation is designed as a cumulative project comprising scientific papers that address different aspects of continuing higher education in Austria. On this basis, the dissertation proposes the development of a recursively structured analytical model capturing interactions and feedback processes between systemic framework conditions, institutional strategies, and impact interrelations of continuing higher education.

(in German)