Intergenerational learning is a growing field of practice across Europe. Against a background of demographic and social changes within European countries and the subsequently altering learning processes between different generations in families, communities, and workplaces, educational organizations face the challenge of providing learning opportunities for the different generations. This paper presents research related to the development of intergenerational learning programs in German adult education organizations. Within that project, adult educators from different organizations took part in a training module on intergenerational learning and subsequently created intergenerational learning programs in their own organizations. In this paper we provide insight into the training program of the participating adult educators, as well as into the results of our empirical study. First, we present the systematic framework of intergenerational learning that was used in the training module to initiate the development of practical intergenerational programs. We then present our research design and the results of the qualitative study. Finally, we discuss these results in terms of theory.

Durch demografische Wandlungsprozesse verändern sich Bevölkerungsstrukturen und mit ihr auch die potenziellen Teilnehmendenstrukturen für Bildungsanbieter. In der Erwachsenenbildung wird darauf mit der Entwicklung von speziellen Angeboten für ältere Teilnehmende sowie mit der Konzeption intergenerationeller Lernangebote für verschiedene Generationen reagiert. Intergenerationelle Lernprozesse intentional zu arrangieren stellt für Erwachsenenbildner(innen) keine geringe Herausforderung dar. In diesem Beitrag werden diese Herausforderungen in den Blick genommen. Dazu werden Orientierungen von in diesem Bereich professionalisierten und nicht professionalisierten Erwachsenenbildner(innen) sowie von Teilnehmenden in intergenerationellen Lernprozessen in einer qualitativen Untersuchung rekonstruiert. Es zeigt sich, dass die andragogische Professionalität von Erwachsenenbildner(innen) ein entscheidender Faktor ist, um explizite intergenerationelle Lernprozesse zu ermöglichen. Demographic changes are leading to an altered population structure and subsequently to changes in the age structure of potential participants in educational training. Adult education has reacted to this by developing special provisions for older participants and a concept of intergenerational learning provision for different generations. Arranging such intentional intergenerational processes is indeed no small task for adult education. This contribution will look at this challenge more closely. To this aim, the orientations of professional and non-professional adult educators and participants in intergenerational learning processes will be reconstructed in a qualitative investigation. It can be shown that the andragogic skill of adult educators is a pre-requisite for the facilitation of learning processes, which are explicitly intergenerational.