Zwischen Schule und Universität: Argumentation in der Mathematik

Several studies show that university students in Germany still have problems in reasoning mathematically although this already should be fostered at high school since the implementation of standards for school mathematics. Mathematical argumentation is a core competence and highly important, especially in academic mathematics. To foster mathematical argumentation at the beginning of university studies, competence models are needed which give more detailed insights in the skills that are necessary for reasoning. As mathematical argumentation is a complex process, especially at the higher secondary level or at university, many little steps are needed to complete a competence model for argumentation at the secondary–tertiary transition gradually. A possible step can be to initially identify several aspects of mathematical argumentation competence that influence the reasoning quality. The empirical basis for identifying those aspects is a cross-sectional study with 439 engineering students who participate in a transition course in mathematics. We address the following questions: (1) how is the quality of student’s reasoning? (2) Which kind of arguments do students use? (3) What resources do students who reasoned correctly use for solving the problems? (4) Does the content of the tasks play an important role? The results show a great influence of the content on the reasoning quality, especially if the content is abstract or concrete. Argumentation quality of students decreases with an increasing level of abstraction of the content. Furthermore, the results reveal that students often use routines for solving the problems. That indicates that procedural approaches still play an important role in school mathematics. If procedures could be used for solving the tasks, students are more successful. Competence models for mathematical argumentation at the beginning of the tertiary level should, therefore, include these factors.     

Komplexität und Kausalität in der erziehungswissenschaftlich motivierten Gewalt-Sozialisationsforschung

Zusammenfassung Im Rahmen dieses Beitrags m?chte ich die Vielschichtigkeit von erziehungswissenschaftlich motivierter Forschung am Beispiel der Wirkungsweise von Geschlechterrollenstereotypen auf die Gewaltsozialisation m?nnlicher Jugendlicher aufzeigen und dabei auf die Notwendigkeit verweisen, dieser theoretischen Komplexit?t mit einer ebenso hohen empirischen und statistischen Komplexit?t zu begegnen. Strukturgleichungsmodelle werden als geeignete Rechenweisen dargestellt und darin die Thematik der Kausalit?t als eine postulierte Verbindung zwischen Ursache und Wirkung diskutiert. Die Akzeptanz des Prinzips ‚keine Ver?nderung ohne Ursache‘ bildet den Grundsatz einer probabilistischen Kausalit?t und dieser stellt die Grundkonzeption einer empirischen Erziehungswissenschaft dar, die statistisches Anwendungsfeld und Theoriesprache miteinander zu verweben weiss.

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Summary An educational science perspective on complexity and causality in the field of socialization to violence This contribution will demonstrate the complexity of educational research. This will be achieved using the example of the effect of young me’s stereotypes for gender roles on their socialization to violence in social contexts. It argues that theoretical complexity must be complimented by an equally high empirical and statistical complexity. structural equitation models are presented as an appropriate method of computation and causality is discussed as a postulated link between cause and effect. The acceptance of the principle „no change without cause“ is the fundamental basis of the concept of probability-bound causality, which, in turn, is the key to an empirical educational science that can interweave the statistical field of application with theoretical discourse.

     

Religion,Identität und Computer

Zusammenfassung Anwendungsf?higkeiten und das Interesse für neueste mediale Technik sind zu einem Kennzeichen moderner Adoleszenz geworden. Dabei spielen das Medium Computer bzw. Anwendungsweisen neuer Medien eine erhebliche Rolle. Doch die Computernutzung Jugendlicher geht über einfache technische Anwendungsweisen weit hinaus. In der Relation von Medium und Subjekt ereignen sich individuelle Identit?tsbildung und Selbststabilisierung, geschehen Suchbewegungen und Explorationen von Subjektgestaltung. Innerhalb dieser Prozesse der Identit?tsbildung und Subjektgestaltung sind Dimensionen jugendlicher Computernutzung zu beobachten, die in den Bereich der individuellen Sinngenese fallen und in den Kontext der Diskussion um Medienreligion bzw. um Formen „verflüssigter“ Religion geh?ren. Wie sich diese Formen ausdifferenzieren will der folgende Beitrag entfalten, dem ein qualitativempirisches Forschungsprojekt zugrunde liegt.

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Summary Religion, Identity and Computers — Fluid forms of religion in youth culture Competency and interest for new media technology have become recognizable elements of modern adolescence. The computer and the use of new media play particularly significant roles in this context. However, adolescents’ use of computers goes far beyond simple technical application. The relationship between medium and subject influences identity formation and self-stabilization, and initiates a process of searching and exploration of individual development. Dimensions of computer use within these processes can be viewed in the context of individual processes of sense-making construction and are therefore relevant to the discussion of media religion and of so-called “fluid” forms of religion. This paper will show how the forms develop on the basis of a qualitative empirical research project.

     

Rituale im Grundschulalter: Performativität,Mimesis und Interkulturalität

Rituals in Primary School Age – Performativity, mimesis and interculturality. Rituals and ritualization play a central role in the upbringing, education and socialization of children at primary school age. They structure children’s lives and support their integration into the social order in a constructive manner. Rituals shape transitions between fields of socialization and institutions, and facilitate social learning, which is important both in lessons and more generally at school. Due to their performativity, pedagogic processes act just like rituals and ritualization in all fields of social action. How children stage (or perform) their behaviour and actions, whether alone or together with adults, can be seen as the performativity of actions. Important aspects of cultural learning at primary school age occur as mimetic processes. In this, pictures, schemes, the expectations of others, of social situations, occurrences and actions are incorporated into an individual’s “world” of mental pictures. This practical knowledge enables children to learn and act together, to live and to exist. In view of Globalization and Europeanization, upbringing and education have become an intercultural task, for which rituals, ritualization, pedagogic and social gestures, the performativity of social practices and mimetic forms of learning play an important role. Ethnography and qualitative methods are appropriate for investigating rituals and ritualization, the performativity of pedagogic practices, of mimetic processes and intercultural education processes. Amongst the most important methods, which are complementary and, where possible, should be combined, are participative observation, video-supported observation, video performance and photograph analysis, interviews and group discussions. With the help of this method-mix, attempts can be made to capture complex and methodologically transparent research results.     

Übereinstimmung,Variabilität und Reliabilität von Schülerurteilen zur Unterrichtsqualität auf Schulebene

Using student ratings to assess instructional quality of schools should fulfill three requirements: (1) an appropriate level of inter-rater agreement within schools, (2) systematic variance of student ratings between schools, (3) an adequate reliability level of aggregated student ratings. Using international PISA-data (2000–2012; 81 countries, over 55,300 schools, over 1.3 million 15-year olds) this study investigated how these requirements were met regarding indicators of instructional quality (classroom management, cognitive activation, individual learning support). We computed the interrater agreement index r_WG(J), as well as the intraclass correlations ICC(1) and ICC(2). Our results showed that (1) student ratings demonstrated a moderate or strong level of agreement for most indicators of instructional quality and (2) instructional quality assessed by students varied systematically between schools. Yet, (3) reliability of aggregated student ratings was not sufficient in many countries. We discuss these results regarding conventions to evaluate agreement, variability, and reliability of student ratings at the school level.     

Jugendliche Identität zwischen Nation,Region und Religion

Gegenstand des Beitrags ist die soziale Identit?tsentwicklung Jugendlicher im Spannungsfeld zwischen supranationalen, nationalen/ethnischen, regionalen, lokalen und religi?sen Konzepten. Hierfür wurde eine repr?sentative Querschnittstudie reanalysiert, wobei die Analysestichprobe 2.187 deutsche und türke Jugendliche zwischen 14 und 19 Jahren umfasst. Es konnte für die deutschen Jugendlichen eine dreidimensionale Identit?tsstruktur mit einer national-subnationalen, einer supranationalen und einer religi?sen Identit?tsdimension bestimmt werden. Hingegen wird die ebenfalls dreidimensionale Identit?tsstruktur der türkischen Jugendlichen durch eine ethnischreligi?se, eine sozial-r?umliche und eine r?umlichadministrative Dimension charakterisiert. Trotz dieser differenten Strukturen weisen beide Gruppen in Hinsicht auf einzelne Identit?tsaspekte ?hnliche Alters-, Geschlechts-, Bildungs- und Wohndauerunterschiede auf.     

Jugend und Kultur – Zwischen Eminem,Picasso und Xavier Naidoo …

The Youth Culture Barometer provides recent data on cultural participation of the 14- to 24-year-olds in Germany. The focus is on cultural and artistic interests, the visit of cultural events, attitudes and desires for cultural visits, as well as cultural biography profiles in this age group. Thereby, culture is conceptualized as an active engagement in the “arts”.With the 2nd Youth Culture Barometer, that is now available, it is possible to have a look at comparisons over time, which reveal that age specific role models break up increasingly and that youthful interests can be classified as rather generation-specific influenced by current social underlying circumstances, like an alternated media- and leisure praxis. In addition, the milieu-specific factor—and in this case education—appears to be particularly imprinting.     

Intercoder-Reliabilität bei der Berufscodierung nach der ISCO-88 und Validität des sozioökonomischen Status

Indicators of social background belong to the standard set of instruments for empirical research in education. Construction of valid ranking scales and category systems for social background depends on a differentiated surveying of the occupation and vocational activity of parents. Coding such details using standard procedures is a complex process. This contribution investigates the intercoder-reliability of occupational codes according to ISCO-88 and the indicators for socio-economic status (ISEI) based on these codes using a random sample of 300 graduates surveyed on the occupation of their father and mother. To this aim, we compared a double-coding by professional coders and a double-coding by the research team. The results show a match of around 50 percent between the two coding groups. The validity of the index of socio-economic status based on the data was, however, very good. The correlation between ISEI-values based on the coding from the different coders was very high. The predication of family background did not vary between the coding of the different coding groups.     

Zwischen Bildungsaufstieg und Karriere Studienperspektiven „nicht-traditioneller Studierender“

This contribution looks at a series of qualitative and quantitative investigations on the study success and study behavior of so-called non-traditional students. Of particular interest are two aspects: the combination of qualitative and quantitative findings, which are mutually complementary and in a sense present plausible corrections for one-sided observations, and controlled observations over a long period of time, as the first studies were carried out within the framework of an international study in 1998 and the last one within the framework of a project sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in 2007. This longer time period certainly increases the plausibility of the cautious diagnoses made, which attempt to capture the relevant changes in this field of research. Such mixed methods research (Derzin 1970, 1989; Flick 1992) – i.e. the link between quantitative and qualitative research and survey methods often termed “triangulation” (cf. Prein/Kelle/Kluge 1993; Flick 1995) – has the advantage that a complex field of research can be scanned using different instruments and through a type of “convergence model” (Jacob 2001) the data won from different methods can be used to mutually validate the results. The qualitative material used in this study comes from theoretical sampling (cf. Glaser 1965; Strauss/Corbin 1996) of data from six German higher education institutions from two points in time (1998 and 2005; n=2x c. 400 surveyed respondents). The quantitative analysis, which was especially carried out for our study, profits from the fact that 2500 interested people responded to our recruitment search for biographic-narrative interviews. This group of people was then asked to participate in a special online survey in 2007 – a cooperative initiative in which around one third of the initial respondents took part. That does, however, mean that the quantitative study is not representative. Our overall research design remains complex, but retains an exploratory character     

Stichwort: Bildungsökonomie und Qualität der Schulbildung

Keyword: Education Economics and Quality of Schooling. With reference to an earlier keyword article from the same author, this contribution looks at recent developments in education economics. The focus is a critical review of the field‘s contribution to research on the necessary conditions for high quality schooling. Of particular interest at the moment are the institutional framework conditions in a school system, which set incentives for performance. These are judged to be better than resource-based strategies of quality assurance. The empirical basis is provided by estimates of production functions using data from international school performance studies. This article will point out the limited validity of evidence gained through these studies and the – in sum – contradictory empirical findings. For this reason, political recommendations on the basis of this approach should be more reserved.     

Migration und Pädagogik — Migration und Gedächtnis

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Zwischen Selbsttätigkeit und Erziehungsbedürftigkeit: das Kind in der “Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung”

In the history of education it is rather common to distinguish two opposing ideas of childhood: the romantic image of the innocent child on the one hand and the image of the evil child that has to be rescued on the other. According to historiography at the beginning of the twentieth century this dichotomy has gained a particular shape in German pedagogy: the exponents of Progressive Education recover the child and founded their pedagogy on trust in its good nature. Their agenda tries to overcome the prevailing Herbartian pedagogy. Those “conservative” educators stress the importance of the technological aspects of education. They are said to have no explicit understanding of the child as they would regard it only as the negative counterpart to an education that aims to overcome its nature. This article claims to prove that such a simple dichotomy is not sufficient to describe the complex image of the child in the German pedagogical debates at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century. For this purpose the article concentrates on the first volumes of the “Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung” (Journal of Child Studies) that was founded in 1896. The ideology of the main editors of the journal is attributed to Herbartianism. In the “Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung” those Herbartians aim to bring together pedagogy with child studies as well as with medicine and psychiatry. Moral education is an important topic within the journal’s discussion but the child is usually not morally judged itself and therefore regarded neither as evil nor as good. Instead the knowledge of natural research and child studies is adapted to learn about the nature of the child and its development. According to the journal’s authors the results of child studies form a crucial background for professional education in general. Later on, those children that do not develop as scientifically expected can be declared the object of special pedagogical care. Should the deviating development be classified as pathological, this “treatment” will be inspired by medicine and psychiatry. Thus the religious or ethical categories of “good” and “evil” are partly replaced by scientific ones such as “normal” or “pathological”. Nevertheless pedagogical theorising remains highly moral in its goals – and setting these goals is regarded as the duty of adults. Although the child is understood as an active being, the educational authority has to be borne by the grown‐up generation. Altogether the educational programme of the “Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung” conforms to the attitude of the Wilhelminian era. In contrast to most of the “progressive” movements, the ideas are not utopian – they aim neither for a republican society nor for the improvement of the German race as the basis for a new nation. The editors explicitly neglect the notion of a child as a political subject with its own rights. Later they remain highly sceptical about the character of human nature itself and do not believe that a new society can be built only upon the faith in it. Nevertheless some of the key authors are regarded as representatives of Progressive Education today – for example Karl Wilker, who acted as an editor of the journal and was also engaged in the New Education Fellowship later on. Also the journal authors’ claims for a renewal of education resemble those of the “progressive” movements: They also call for a turn to the child as the basis of pedagogy. These findings lead to the result that a history of childhood and education may not start out from a distinction between a child‐centred progressive education on the one hand and a conservative education on the other. Phrases like “the child” or “child‐centred” are to be found in very different pedagogies and hence are not sufficient to characterise a particular educational programme. In fact a great number of very different pedagogues recovered “the child” at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century and founded their model on this idea. In consequence “the child” turns out to be more like a metaphor. This insight does not mean that “the child” was an empty and useless phrase for historiography. On the contrary: as a medium of education it may help to gain a deeper understanding of the contrasts and similarities between different pedagogical approaches – regardless of whether they turn out to be more “progressive” or “conservative”. Therefore it is necessary to analyse in which contexts within the pedagogical discourse “the child” arises and which special functions it is meant to contain.     

Professionalität im Lehrerberuf

Zusammenfassung Seit eine (meist soziologische) Theorie der Professionen existiert, ist die Frage der Anerkennung der P?dagogen, zumal der Lehrer, als Profession strittig. Meist werden sie als Defizitgruppe codiert: als „semi-professionals“, behaftet mit einem „notorischen“ oder „strukturellen“ „Professionalisierungsdefizit“, allenfalls „Beruf“, kaum „Profession“, in der Arbeit an „strukturellen Defiziten“ ohne eindeutige „Technologie“, ein „unm?glicher Beruf“. Die These ist: Solche Codierungen sind weitgehend unbrauchbar, sie verweisen auf die mangelnde Sensibilit?t der Professionstheorie für das p?dagogische Feld, sie ignorieren die Leistungen der P?dagogik und das Potential ihrer Technologie. Deshalb: Auch Professionstheorie muss „p?dagogisch“ sein, das Gelingen ihrer Praxis nicht als Trivialit?t abwerten, sondern als Leistung erkl?ren, die Voraussetzungen für die Praxis des Berufs benennen und die Chancen der Steigerung der Qualit?t p?dagogischer Arbeit aufzeigen. Eine erste Version dieses Textes wurde als Er?ffnungsvortrag bei der Studien- und Kongresswoche 2005 der P?dagogischen Hochschule Bern „Professionelles Handeln im Lehrerberuf“, Bern 18.10.2005, vorgetragen.     

Ausbildungs- und Berufserfolg im Lehramtsstudium im Vergleich zum Diplom-Studium – Zur prognostischen Validität kognitiver und psycho-motivationaler Auswahlkriterien

The basis of this study is a prognostic model derived from the theory of work and organizational psychology, from research about the selection of college students and from teaching and learning research. The model includes cognitive and psycho-motivational criteria for selecting students as well as objective and subjective indicators for study and job success. In a four-year longitudinal study with three measuring points, the prognostic validity of the selection criteria is tested (n?=?760). The basic hypotheses are that differences in the prognostic validity of the model for teacher training and subject-specific diploma students (both in the area of mathematics) exist, and that it is easier to predict study success than job success. Secondary school exit exam, classes in advanced mathematics, interest in mathematics, subject-specific study motivation and self-efficacy are the predictive indicators taken into account. Evaluative indicators for study success are study duration, intentions of dropping out, stress experiences, the results of university exit exam and students’ second state exam. Evaluative indicators for occupational success are the job status five years after graduation, job satisfaction and stress experiences. Bivariate correlations and regression analyses support the leading hypotheses.     

Exzellenz durch Internationalität

Like excellence, internationality has evolved into a key concept for German universities. This article reconstructs the manifold genesis of internationality as a principle for stratificatory claims on the basis of science policy documents. At the levels of student exchange, researcher mobility, and university cooperation, three changes are elaborated upon: the transition from the medieval universitas of the nationes to the national university, the increasing competitive orientation of a concept of internationality based on cooperation and cultural exchange, and the transformation of internationality under the auspices of excellence. At the same time, it will be shown how international understanding, exchange, and competition as guiding principles of an internationalization discourse are enacted differently in varying historical contexts. It will be demonstrated that internationality as a sign of excellence becomes a strategy for universities to position themselves as superior in their respective fields.