ABSTRACT
This chapter defines the term 'research-based education', concentrating on the discourse in German-speaking countries. It also discusses how universities can become a platform for intergenerational learning and finally introduces a continuing education programme organised by the University of Graz, which is aimed at people in their 'second half of life'. Universities would be ideal places to foster critical debate, analysis and reflexion and to offer continuing education which is perceived as the 'cultural self-reflexion of a knowledge-based society'. The mathematician Roland Fischer and the philosopher Markus Arnold have defined research-based education as the acquisition of basic knowledge and general skills by 'non-experts'. Research-based general education needs to enable students to ask the right questions, acquire the ability to identify and analyse knowledge, to synthesise knowledge and place it within a wider context, to understand, and acquire methods for describing the complexity of knowledge.
