The Training of Civil Engineers and Architects in the Five New German LänderBefore and After Reunification

The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 led to the collapse of the communistic regimes in the Soviet‐dominated Eastern and Central European countries. The so‐called ‘East’ Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which in West German terminology means ‘Central’ or ‘Middle’ Germany, became part of the German Federal Republic on 3 October 1990. In the treaty on the establishment of German unity, the German Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat,) was given the task by the Federal Government and by those of the States (Länder) to undertake a survey of publicly financed facilities for science and research in the former GDR and make proposals for necessary renewal. The author was a member of two of the working groups of the German Science Council, in charge of producing an expert opinion on the future structure of engineering education in the five new Länder and Berlin (East). Having known the situation in the GDR long before the Wall came down, the author describes briefly the training of civil engineers and architects before and after German unification. Not every step in the legal procedure in the new five Länder can be documented here, and it is also not intended to discuss scientific research in the GDR in great detail. All the data produced in the following tables are taken from the reports of the German Science Council [1, 2]. For a better understanding of German school and university training, see [3]. When statements by ‘insiders’ are cited, colleagues in the GDR, well known to the author before 1990, are meant.     

Politics and Education

This paper examines the question of whether the period since German unification has been one of reform in the education system of Germany. It outlines the developments in secondary education in Germany since 1990, and argues that the changes in the eastern federal states do not represent reform, but rather a restoration of the less than ideal educational structures that have been in place for so long in the western federal states.     

Conceptions of Knowledge and Institutional Realities: reflections on the creation of a new university in eastern Germany

This article has to do with a particularly persistent and intriguing problem in the politics of higher education, namely, the fault lines between ideas and reality, between a concept of a university and its implementation. The case in point is the creation of a new university at Frankfurt (Oder)—the European University ‘Viadrina‘—in the state of Brandenburg, on the eastern edge of what used to be the (East) German Democratic Republic. The case study traces the politics of creating and designing the new institution under the special conditions of post‐unification Germany and focuses on the challenges of implementing the twin elements of its founding concept: a particularly intensive international orientation, especially in its relationship with neighbouring Poland, and an attempt to transcend the boundaries of discipline‐based scholarship in teaching and research. Substantial problems with the implementation of the concept notwithstanding, the Viadrina stands a reasonable chance of becoming one of the few exceptions to the rule that unification has produced little innovation in German higher education.     

Hochschulerneuerung nach der Vereinigung der beiden deutschen Staaten?

The unification of the two German states in October 1990 had a significant impact on educational politics. The combination of two educational and university systems that were based on clearly divergent political and social foundations lay ahead. The thesis is discussed here that the unification of FRG and GDR could not lead to the renewal of universities in Germany but only to an adaptation of eastern society to western society. But with the foundation of a Faculty of Educational Sciences at the Technical University of Dresden (Land Saxony) successful attempts to renewals at an intermediate level are also presented. The author describes the production and realization of a project he helped to develop and at the same time addresses the emerging problems the new faculty triggered.     

Education and schooling in East Germany

Since the summer of 1989, “peaceful revolutions” started to bring down the communist rule in the states of the Soviet sphere of influence. These revolutions led to a complete transformation of the political, ideological and economic systems. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was re-structured into Laender which became constituent states of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). The socio-political change transformed the whole education system in East Germany. After the first changes between autumn 1989 and spring 1990 under the responsibility of the old regime, there was a broad consensus that a comprehensive reshaping of the educational system was necessary. The transformation process began after re-unification and national and state elections in October, November and December 1990. All elements of the GDR school system were sustainably reshaped. This included policy, law, organization, structure, curricula, and, partially, personnel. This being achieved by the mid-1990s, the educational transformation rapidly showed itself as only preliminary. The most important reason is the drastic decline in the birth rate that is causing serious problems to all parts of the newly established educational systems in East Germany. But as it shows, the current public discourse on outcome and competitiveness of the all-German school system in the aftermath of the PISA study is distracting from all other urgent problems in education and schooling in the new Laender.     

The socio‐political significance of changes to the vocational education system in Germany

This paper explores the effects on social inequality in Germany of ongoing changes to the employment system and, thus, vocational education. Results based on an examination of the literature indicate that students from increasingly middle‐class backgrounds with higher levels of general, rather than vocational, educational attainment are winning the competition for ever‐fewer apprenticeships. Progress for women in education is accompanied by relative declines in men’s performance on high school exit examinations and does not translate into success in the employment system. Employers are abandoning the corporate‐state organization of vocational education. The paper concludes that school degrees are increasingly important for later career opportunities. As a result, the educational system is increasingly stratified, contributing to social inequality in Germany.     

Zur Tätigkeit und den wirkungen der Enquete-Kommission “Zukünftige Bildungspolitik — BIldung 2000” des Deutschen Bundestages

At the end of 1987 the lower house of the German parliament (Bundestag) established a Commission of Enquiry to make recommendations by the end of the parliamentary session in 1990 on the future direction of education policy in the Federal Republic. The problems and disagreements associated with its establishment and terms of reference are discussed. Attempts to reach a new consensus in educational policy were crucial to its activities. Against this background, and following a short discussion of the development of educational policy from the early 1970s to the end of the 1980s, the next sections of the paper present the essential findings of the Commission. It is seen that the Interim Report, and particularly the Final Report, were marked by a large number of divergent votes between the majority CDU/CSU and FDP Members of Parliament and experts, and the minority SPD and Green MPs and experts. There was also a remarkable degree of consensus, albeit at a relatively abstract level. The last section of the paper looks forward to further parliamentary consideration of the Final Report, and to the likelihood of the Commission's recommendations' being implemented, insofar as this can be delineated or anticipated two years after the conclusion of its work. In this context it is proper to address also the problems for educational policy posed by the unification of Germany on 3rd October 1990, two weeks after the Commission completed its work, and by the drawing together of Europe through the single internal market from 1993.     

Pupil mobility,attainment and progress in primary school

This article presents an analysis of the association between pupil mobility and educational attainment in the 2002 national end of Key Stage 2 (KS2) tests for 11‐year‐old pupils in an inner London education authority. The results show that pupil mobility is strongly associated with low attainment in the end of key stage tests. However, the negative association with pupil mobility is reduced by half when account is taken of other pupil background factors known to be related to educational attainment (such as special educational need and socio‐economic disadvantage), and is eliminated entirely when account is also taken of pupils' prior attainment as indicated by end of KS1 test scores at age 7. Thus there is no indication that changing school has a negative impact on educational progress during primary school. Pupils who join their school during KS2 from other schools in England are more likely to be ‘at risk’ of low attainment due to higher levels of socio‐economic disadvantage, a greater need for support in relation to English as an additional language, a higher incidence and greater severity of special educational needs and pre‐existing low attainment at the end of KS1. A key factor in understanding the relationship between mobility and attainment is the reason for mobility. One‐third of mobile pupils had arrived from schools outside of England, often as refugees, asylum seekers or economic migrants, and these pupils accounted for the major part of the effect ascribed to ‘pupil mobility’. The low attainment of these pupils is the result not of ‘changing school’ but of a broad range of factors including substantial cultural, educational and social adjustment.     

关于德国统一后的问题分析

统一后的德国并没有给东德居民带来企盼已久的民主、自由和繁荣，反而带来了诸多社会问题，大大刺伤了其民众心理，这种状况的出现有多方面原因。一、从心理角度看，东德居民认为所谓的统一是西德接管了东德；二、从经济角度看，执政的科尔政府没有采取切实可行的复苏德东经济的政策或措施；三、从政治角度看，执政府没有切实负起统一后的责任等。     

Michael Sadler and the German Connection

Abstract

The peoples of Germany and their culture were a major preoccupation of Michael Sadler from his first visits to eastern Germany in the 1890s to his ultimate analysis of the Nazi‐zeit in 1940. Whilst holding the post of first Director of the Office of Special Inquiries and Reports (1895‐1903) he organised the publication of 11 massive volumes of reports and it is significant that papers dealing with German themes are numerous. Volume IX in 1902 is devoted to Education in Germany. In 1907 he published the results of his study of continuation schools and the pioneering of his friend Georg Kerschensteiner and in 1908 he edited the report of an international enquiry into Moral Education with a keynote essay by another of his German friends Professor Rudolf Eucken. The quintessence of all this pre‐war study is contained in an address on England's Debt to German Education which Sadler gave in Frankfurt‐am‐Main in 1912 when he suggested eight lessons that could be learnt from the German experience. Throughout the first world war Sadler wrote and spoke much about parallel movements in German and English education. Between the first and second world wars he watched apprehensively the emergence of Nazism. In his diary of November 1940 he attempted to identify seven tendencies of the 1930s which, had the Nazi leadership not been so powerful in curbing public opinion and ensuring totalitarian control, would have proved constructive and made a contribution towards unifying Europe economically andpolitically.     

The Challenge of Unification and the Reform of Higher Education in Germany

Because the reunification of Germany came suddenly in the form of the accession of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the unification of the systems of higher education of the two parts of Germany came about in similar manner. As a result, the higher education institutions of the former GDR system assimilated many of the problems of the FRG system. It proved impossible to merge the systems slowly while both of them underwent reform. More than ten years after the reunification of Germany, it is time to bring about a reform of the higher education system of the whole country. Many reform proposals are on the table.     

Constructing school knowledge after the Wall: the case of textbook publishing in the former German Democratic Republic

Organisational ecology and world cultural perspectives are used to analyse the struggle of the former East German textbook publisher Volk und Wissen after reunification. We argue that the normative expectations of Western Germany with respect to instructional materials clearly emulate world cultural principles, and so Volk und Wissen’s transition into Germany’s fiercely competitive educational publishing market offers an interesting test of the effects of educational globalisation. Reliance on the marketing expertise of Cornelsen, a Western German firm that acquired Volk und Wissen in 1991, helped the firm survive, but also retaining a ‘monist’ epistemological stance that was consistent with that of teachers trained in the socialist system.     

Retracking on a grand scale: policy and pedagogy in the reform of eastern German secondary schools after the fall of socialism

This article reports on a multi‐year study of changes in eastern German schools after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the wake of national unification, the traditional three‐track structure of the West German educational syatem was re‐institutionalized in eastern German secondary schools. The article explores how teachers respond to this shift from the untracked socialist common school to the new track system. The study found that influences of state policies on teachers’ tracking pedagogy varied. The new institutions have forcefully shaped many teachers’ assumptions about students’ ability and career paths. Value orientations are characterized by ambivalence; while organizational goals and values are very exclusion‐oriented, the role of schools in society is defined in more inclusive terms. Contrary to exclusion‐oriented sentiments, instructional routines changed little; they flow, to a large extent, from the previous inclusive curriculum that was geared to the average or ‘normal’ student during socialist times. The study underlines the importance of examining multiple layers of beliefs and practices for an adequate understanding of the relationship between policy and practice.     

Geographical mobility and children’s non-completion of upper secondary education in Finland and Germany: Do parental resources matter?

It is often assumed that families migrate to improve their economic and social prospects, and that these additional resources can benefit the whole family. However, existing research suggests that many children who have experienced (internal) migration underperform compared to their non-migrating peers in terms of different socioeconomic outcomes. In this article, we study the effects of geographical mobility on children’s non-completion of upper secondary education in Finland and Germany using Finnish register data and the German National Educational Panel Study. Our findings indicate that moving during childhood is associated with the risk of not attaining any secondary degree in both countries. In Finland, this is mostly explained by negative selection into moving (i.e. those who move are more likely to be disadvantaged). In Germany, however, an independent association between moving and educational attainment remains after taking into account various reasons why families move. Furthermore, for both Germany and Finland, any labour force status or earning gains parents make after a move do not seem to compensate for the negative influence of internal migration on children’s educational dropout. Overall, we conclude that geographically mobile children may be a vulnerable subgroup in the inter-generational transmission of inequality, therefore schools have an important role to play in integrating internal migrants—as well as international migrants—into the social networks of the schools they arrive in.     

Intergenerational transmission of educational disadvantage: Education progression of children of care leavers compared to a general population sample

There is persistent evidence showing that care leavers tend to have lower educational outcomes compared to their peers. There is, however, less knowledge of whether this educational disadvantage transfers to the second generation. This study adopts a developmental contextual life-course approach to examine: (a) the extent of educational inequality of children of care leavers from school entry to public examinations at age 16; (b) the relative role of different psychosocial family resources as predictors of educational attainment; and (c) the role of early school readiness assessments as predictors of later educational attainment. Drawing on data collected from families living in England at the first sweep of the nationally representative UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) (n = 11,514), the findings suggest intergenerational transmission of educational disadvantage among children of care leavers (n = 287), which is manifest in a direct assessment of school readiness (age 3), at the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) (age 5) and in General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) attainment (age 16). However, once inequalities in family socio-economic background or area deprivation and housing are controlled for, children of care leavers perform comparably in their educational progression to those whose mothers had no experience of being in care (n = 11,227). Moreover, the findings highlight the significance of early school readiness assessments in predicting later educational attainment for the whole sample. Findings are discussed regarding their implications for policy, in particular the need to address educational inequality for children in care, area allocation and housing that is offered to care leavers, and the general importance of early interventions.     

Curriculum transition in Germany and South Africa: 1990–2010

At first sight, there is not much to compare, or any reason to compare, German and South African curricular frameworks. The history, nature of their respective transitions, level of development and educational legacies are very different. But the fall of the Berlin Wall and ending of apartheid brought both within a common neo-liberal global framework. A significant literature in comparative education points to increasing homogeneity in education systems and their curricula, while another points to how states and societies transfer, borrow, absorb or deflect such ideas in a manner that confirms difference and diversity, linked to historical specificity. The article probes these questions by comparing the history curriculum changes and their implications in both Germany and South Africa from 1990 to 2010 using a framework derived from Hayden White. It argues first that while the transitions in the 1990s were notably dissimilar, the international testing movement a decade later helped to precipitate common responses in the adoption and strengthening of standards in the early 2000s. However, despite this apparent convergence, the nature of standards developed differed substantially and these differences were linked to respective histories of history education in the transition. This article argues secondly that history curricula of both East and West Germany and a unified Germany had fully elaborated knowledge-focused curricula until the 2000s when competences were introduced. South Africa's 1997 curriculum did not build on past curricula, but its outcomes became hybridised artefacts before being abandoned in 2009 when the period of superficial convergence of form between the two countries came to an end. The article uses a combination of primary and secondary documents.     

School improvement through inspections? First empirical insights from Germany

Since the late 1990s, broad discussions on education and educational quality have given impetus to the implementation of many new measures aimed at the improvement of schools in Germany. In this context, school inspections have been introduced in all 16 German federal states during the last 6 years. In the meantime, scientific research into the functioning of this steering instrument has begun. In this article, first empirical findings on the effects of school inspections in Germany are presented by drawing on a survey study with 468 principals of schools in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia that were externally evaluated during the years 2005 to 2008. Findings indicate that school inspection results are considered by a large group of stakeholders within schools and that they are discussed in different settings. In many schools, development measures have already been planned and implemented. Moreover, first effects are perceived in different fields. On the whole, findings agree with the results of two thematically related German studies but draw a less heterogeneous picture than the international research context.     

德国的民族主义与德国的统一

中世纪向近代转向时期德国民族主义思想的萌芽为德国民族主义的兴起、发展和近代德国的统一创造了有利条件。启蒙运动时期德国民族意识觉醒,18世纪80年代文化民族主义的形成为德国的统一奠定了思想文化基础。经济民族主义为德国的统一奠定了经济基础。政治民族主义为德国的统一奠定了现实基础。     

Was East German Education a Victim of West German 'Colonisation' after Unification?

German unification took place very rapidly, and it is sometimes argued that East German education was colonised in a process according to which ideas and structures (some of which were not very successful in the West) were foisted on the East in the cause of unity and homogeneity. This paper argues that the 'victim/colonisation' hypothesis is exaggerated. There was a suppressed reform tendency in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) that resulted in several distinctive educational institutions in the New Bundesländer. Although it is true that a controversial divided secondary school structure replaced the GDR unified school, it was the East Germans themselves who clamoured for the grammar school without paying sufficient attention to the implications for those pupils who failed to obtain entry into it. Their suspicions that their most able children were under-achieving were not validated by empirical studies. To a certain degree, reverse transformation can be observed (influence from East to West). In the field of pre-school education and childcare, for example, the spectacle of a well-developed sector in the East made the Westerners realise that they themselves had no adequate policy or strategy so they began to develop one. The Wisssenschaftsrat (Higher Education Council) too drew attention to the efficiency of the GDR higher education system, and in certain respects is striving to emulate it in the Old Bundesländer. The conviction of having been 'colonised' feeds resentment that could result in a backlash against democratic values. The paper ends with a brief discussion of the implications of the colonisation hypothesis for citizenship.