Schools in times of change

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Tobias Feldhoff; Professor Dr. Eckhard Klieme; Professorin Dr. Sabine Reh
• Subject Area: Education Systems and Educational Institutions ; General Education and History of Education
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 503104756

School is considered to be the institution that serves the socialisation and systematic qualification of future generations for a life in society. It appears to be very stable in its basic structures, but the social changes in recent decades have also brought new demands on schools in Germany. For example, as a result of the expansion of education, the number of children and young people attending the Gymnasium increased. While migration changed the composition of cohorts attending school, responding to students’ individual background and learning conditions became a major issue. Changes at the structural and curricular level (e.g. types of schools, curricula) are comparatively well documented. Changes in the culture of schooling and teaching however, above all at the level of professional practice, can hardly be traced for lack of data for the last decades. Many hypotheses have been set up, but hardly any empirically well-founded knowledge is available on this matter. Addressing this research gap, the present proposal aims at new theoretical and empirical contributions to understanding continuity and change in cultures of schooling. Major research goals include the identification of cultures of schooling and teaching specific to different periods as well as the analysis of conditions, processes, and effects of long-term changes. This study’s starting point is Fend's “Drei-Länder-Studie (DLS)”, which was conducted in the German states of Hesse, Lower Saxony, and North Rhine-Westphalia in 1978/79. DLS is considered to be one of the most important studies in the history of Educational Research in Germany. In addition to addressing structural issues (e.g. comparison between different school types), which are not in focus for the present project, DLS identified a variety of features in schooling and teaching , and related them to student learning and educational outcomes. Some forty years later, the present study intends to reassess the still existing schools which have been part of DLS (N=48), applying largely identical instruments to cover characteristics of school and teaching culture, learning prerequisites, and student outcomes. Most of the test and survey items used by Fend can still be used, as shown by extensive preliminary studies. The follow-up after four decades aims to examine changes at the level of individual schools as well as across schools. This quantitative study, in combination with case studies at selected individual schools, provides the empirical foundation for an educational-historical analysis of school-related and teaching-related changes. To sum up, the proposed project will (1) document quantitative-empirical evidence of change and stability in a significant group of schools, based on the state-of-the-art theory and methodology, (2) contextualize this evidence from an educational-historical point of view, and finally (3) provide further contextualization with regard to general historical developments since the 1970s.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Switzerland
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Sebastian Wurster
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Helmut Fend