Education For All, By All And With All

05/19/2025

Racism does not stop at educational institutions. Educational researchers at the University of Würzburg have investigated how they can successfully combat it.

Adult education centres should provide "education for all". With the addition of "by all and with all", they also become a platform for representatives of various marginalised groups. (Image: luckybusiness / Adobe Stock)

At adult education centres (in Germany i.e. Volkshochschulen, VHS), people learn foreign languages for their next holiday, try out new recipes in cookery courses or attend yoga classes for senior citizens. But that's not all: the VHS is far more diverse. Adult education centres are in fact important providers of adult education in Germany. In 2021, around 900 institutions offered a total of 285,920 courses on a wide range of topics that extend far beyond cooking, languages and sport.

Adult education centres are partly subsidised by the state and therefore have a public responsibility to provide education for all. Accordingly, many of them have set themselves the goal of being an important building block for reducing discrimination in society as a whole.

Publication in "Education and Learning of Adults"

Educational researchers at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) have investigated how they fulfil this task. Jennifer Danquah, a doctoral student at the Chair of Adult Education / Continuing Education under Professor Regina Egetenmeyer, was responsible for this study. The two have now published the results of their study in the RELA - European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults .

"We conducted numerous interviews with employees at a VHS, including both those with and without management responsibility as well as people from the direct environment of the VHS," says Jennifer Danquah, describing the approach. Five of these interviews serve as the basis for the recently published article; the current management of the VHS as well as their predecessor and three people responsible for programme design were interviewed. "We were primarily interested in what opportunities managers have to support organisational development processes that are critical of racism," says Danquah.

Two Main Forms of Support

Two main forms of support have emerged: firstly, the development of a guiding organisational principle of education "for all, by all and with all" and secondly, community-led programming that supports socially disadvantaged population groups in shaping their own learning paths.

"The original aim of adult education centres is to offer education for all," says Jennifer Danquah. However, in order to truly offer educational opportunities for all, the management has expanded this motif by adding "by all and with all". "This defines the VHS as a platform for representatives of various marginalised groups," explains the education researcher.

The VHS is thus pursuing an approach that recognises diversity and aims to give every group affected by structural discrimination the chance to have their own learning experiences. "The VHS thus becomes a platform that provides participants with the necessary resources to organise their own learning opportunities according to their different needs."

Close Dialogue With Various Communities

However, it is not only the management level of an adult education centre that is particularly important when it comes to racism-sensitive design - those responsible for the programme can also provide support. In the case investigated by Danquah, this development was preceded by an educational project in which members of the Black communities had called for information about and the renaming of street names with colonial references in the neighbourhood of the adult education centre. As a result, the management of the VHS at the time supported the establishment of a programme area that permanently addresses the needs of this population group.

The actual implementation is in the hands of the programme planning department. "In this case, the person responsible worked closely with representatives of these communities and, among other things, adapted their working hours to the needs of the communities and regularly visited them on site," explains Danquah. Only then was it possible to represent the diversity of Black life realities in the VHS programme.

As a result, the VHS has rethought its traditional staff structures and employed special coordinators to liaise between these communities and the VHS. These coordinators can identify specific needs and design courses together with the programme planners, course instructors and participants, adapting them dynamically to the needs of the communities.

Important Contribution to the Racism-sensitive Design of Educational Institutions

"Our qualitative case study shows that managers are key players in organisational development in adult education that is critical of racism - especially when they use their scope for action in a self-reflective way and develop inclusive learning environments together with Afro-diasporic and Black communities, for example," Jennifer Danquah and Regina Egetenmeyer conclude.

Using the adult education centre as an example, their study thus makes an important contribution to the racism-sensitive design of educational institutions and to the question of how to counter growing anti-democratic tendencies with the help of management staff.

Original Publication

'For all, by all, with all': Directors and programme planners as co-creators of racism-critical organisational development in adult education. A case study at the German Volkshochschule. Jennifer Danquah, Regina Egetenmeyer, European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults. http://doi.org/10.3384/rela.2000-7426.5670