Aims, contents, and competencies in university courses of educational science. A historical-empirical analysis

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Klaus-Peter Horn
• Subject Area: General Education and History of Education
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 310350054

Since the beginning of the Bologna-Reform, one can observe an increasing differentiation of degree programs in educational science which leads to a hardly manageable number of fields of studies in this area. This observation serves as the starting point for this project. The main goal of the research project is to further historical-empirically prove this observation by evaluating study and exam regulations. These regulations are understood as ideal concepts of university teaching. The project aims to reconstruct and analyze the general study goals, contents, and competencies to be achieved by students within the degree programs of educational science by considering module manuals, study and exam regulations. The project will examine whether the strong differentiation/diversification is also visible on the level of the concrete organization of courses at German universities; or whether the different university courses of educational science, at different locations and with different major fields of studies, are more similar in study goals, contents and required competencies than they are divided by differences.The first step focuses on the analysis of the constituent documents that define the studies of educational science. The analysis will consider current as well as historical relevant documents to allow first insight into the ideal typical structure of this field of study.In a second step an empirical survey and examination of the aims, contents, and required competencies of all current programs of educational science follows. On that basis we can develop an empirically proven type formation/classification of locations. This will be used as a basis for a representative selection of university locations, for which, in a third step, a detailed analysis of all former study and exam regulations is intended. Lastly, a fourth step of examination aims at an empirical screening of how the earlier processed documents are implemented in the study and exam regulations, considered for the current situation and for the historical development.The qualitative content-analytical revision of study and exam regulations allows us to describe major study fields of educational science. Additionally, it permits statements about the inner disciplinary discourse, about the current state of educational science, and its place at university. Thereby, the project makes an important contribution to the research on the development of educational science over the last 50 years.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants