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7/24/2025

Study enables longitudinal research on teaching staff in adult education - first TAEPS data set available

Fuß, Daniel

Researchers now have access to the data from the longitudinal study TAEPS (Teachers in Adult Education - A Panel Study). The recently published Scientific Use File (SUF) contains structured information on the qualifications, competences and employment conditions of teaching staff as well as on further education institutions in Germany. For the first time, a comprehensive, empirically robust data set is now available that enables in-depth analyses of a previously under-researched area of education.

In many respects, adult and further education is already the largest educational sector in Germany. However, there is still comparatively little empirical knowledge available about teachers in this sector. TAEPS, a joint project by the German Institute for Adult Education – Leibniz Centre for Lifelong Learning (DIE, Bonn) and the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi, Bamberg), makes an important effort to close this gap. To do so, several thousand teachers from all areas of adult and further education are surveyed up to three times over a period of five years about their professional situation and their professional competencies. Beyond this individual perspective, the interest is also directed at the structural framework conditions of institutions, companies and solo self-employed people who offer further education courses.

The first Scientific Use File on TAEPS consists of the edited data from the first panel wave of the teachers’ survey with information from the telephone interviews and the web-based administered competence measurements on the one hand. On the other hand, it contains the data from the telephone survey among n=1,000 randomly selected institutions with further education programs. The Scientific Use File is accessible free of charge via download and on-site in the LIfBi data security area. Prerequisite for the use of the data is the conclusion of a TAEPS Data Use Agreement. The corresponding form with instructions on how to fill it out can be found on the website, as well as the German and English data documentation including a Data Manual and recommendations for data citation.

To the TAEPS Website

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