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
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.