Project

Deutsch

The research project examines the advising and guidance of students and prospective students in the field of continuing higher education at German universities. Based on an exploratory qualitative study, the project investigates how actors who assume advisory responsibilities for (prospective) continuing education students reflect on their own advisory role and practices, and which field-specific structural conditions shape advisory practice in continuing higher education. To this end, the study aims to elaborate how everyday advisory practice in the field of guidance and counselling in continuing higher education operates, which advisory and professional (self-)understandings shape the actors’ practices, and to reconstruct a logic of professional advisory practice specific to the field of continuing higher education. The dissertation contributes to the debate in educational sciences on the professionalism of guidance and counselling in education, training, and employment by specifying this discussion for the particular field of continuing higher education and by placing the actors engaged in advising in this field at the centre of analysis. Since this group of actors is considered part of the so-called “new higher education professionals” (HOPROs), the dissertation also connects to the debate on this increasingly important group of actors in higher education, who operate within a hybrid field of responsibilities between academia and administration.

(in German)