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Foreword

"Assisted Learning" is the first book in the series "Contributions to Adult Education" of the publisher Bildungstransfer. This series aims at making both future-oriented and action-relevant writings from the research on and practice of adult education, available to the interested English-speaking public.

Here Rolf Arnold combines three trends of long years of research activity: his innovative teaching methods based on the principles of self-determination and self-control of the learner, the concept of "pedagogic leadership" and finally the approach of "emotional competence". These three pillars form the fundamental basis for "Assisted Learning" as a future-oriented concept of adult education that places the learner at the centre point.

"Assisted Learning" (enabling didactics) characterizes a teaching-learning process, which shifts the angle of vision away from teaching to learning. In class, as in other learning situations there is no direct and causal production of learning. Learning takes place exclusively through independent acquisition of the learner. As a result what is taught is not what is learnt.

Rather, under this perspective the focus shifts away from the mediation of learning content by the teacher to an active appropriation by the learner. The teacher must prepare the learning content methodically in such a way that the activity of learning is transfered to the learner. This finding is mirrored in the systemic-constructivist thinking of the author.

Thus there is a departure from the so-called "generation or instruction teaching," which assumes that learning and the mediation of certain selected learning content could be feasible, if only the targets are accurately predetermined and the learning process planned with one's own methods and materials. The teacher can only encourage the students to learn, he can accompany them and "arrange" learning processes. Teaching from the viewpoint of "Assisted Learning" means creating learning-stimulating conditions and generating learning spaces.