Association of Austrian Adult Education Centr

The Association of Austrian Adult Education Centres (Verband Österreichischer Volkshochschulen – VÖV), founded in 1950, is a non-partisan educational organisation with a long tradition based on a federal structure. It can look back on a specific tradition of adult and general education in Austria that dates back to well into the 19th century. Today, the adult education centres are the largest adult education institution in the country with 700,000 participants per year. All of the programmes on offer claim to be science-based. 

The adult education centres

• work on a non-profit and low-threshold basis. They thus offer all people in Austria the opportunity to participate in education.
• are a leading educational institution, for example in the areas of health education, languages, creativity, democratic education and science education, digital skills, basic education and school-leaving qualifications.
• provide a wide range of services for the region and society at over 800 locations, with 1,200 full-time employees, 13,000 course instructors and numerous volunteers, and are important local and regional meeting places.
• are able to react quickly to current requirements in times of crisis.
• offer excellent framework and working conditions for the concrete implementation of education in accordance with recognised quality criteria for all those involved.
• have been active in democracy and science education for over a hundred years and work for social cohesion and sustainable development.

Adult education centres advocate recognising the democratic potential of citizen science at the level of education policy and supporting it accordingly. Citizen science can also be seen as an effective instrument for strengthening trust in science (and thus democracy) through the broadest and most intensive participation possible

At the regional or institutional level, adult education centres are available for corresponding projects and collaborations or are already actively involved in them.

Furthermore, it is not least a matter of at least anchoring approaches and methods of citizen science in various adult education centre course segments or formats.