Professorship of Business Education (Prof. Dr. Silvia Annen)

In an increasingly digitalized and globalized world, we, the team at the Professorship of Business Education (Prof. Dr. Annen), want to help shape the future of vocational education. Our aim is to make an active contribution to the academic discourse on educational pathways and decisions, informal learning in a vocational context and the usability of qualifications and skills on the labor market. In doing so, we take particular account of current global megatrends and future social challenges in a national and international context.

"Research VET to shape the future"

In order to strengthen vocational education both nationally and internationally, we set ourselves the goal of critically examining trends and influences on vocational education. In doing so, we focus equally on the (vocational) education system (educational decisions and pathways, informal learning) and the labor market (usability of qualifications and skills, returns on education). Our goal is not only to research continuous learning processes over the course of a person's life, but also to actively practice them with regard to further methodological qualification and the promotion of young academics by means of interdisciplinary questions. In this context, we actively incorporate current and future educationally relevant objectives and trends such as sustainability, gender sensitivity, language sensitivity and globalization into our research.

The long-term goal of the Professorship of Business Education is to conduct academic and practically relevant research on the topics of educational decisions and pathways, educational mobility, professional and labour market integration and corporate transformation processes (digitalization, sustainability, globalization). We analyze and design educational and learning processes at both company and individual level. To ensure the practical relevance of our research, we work closely with our cooperation partners and take on board their valuable input. We develop scientifically sound solutions for them, such as innovative teaching-learning formats and domain-specific competence models. With this in mind, we are expanding existing practical collaborations with companies and are interested in new collaborations with practical partners.

In addition to the practical aspects, our team takes particular account of international perspectives in order to broaden our view of vocational education and to take up both research methodological and thematic impulses from the international discourse and incorporate them into our research. We work closely with various international universities and research institutions (e.g. in Canada, Brazil and France). Our holistic view of educational and learning processes enables us to shape the future of vocational education and training together with our partners from science and practice.

We work on topics in the context of the above-mentioned fields as part of funded collaborative projects (with national and international research and practice partners), individual research projects and qualification research. If you are interested in our current research projects, please visit our "Current projects" page.