Soziale Ungleichheiten beim Übergang von der Grundschule in die Sekundarstufe I: Theorie,Forschungsstand, Interventions- und Fördermöglichkeiten

Based on a theoretical model, which distinguishes between primary and secondary effects following Boudon, the present paper summarizes empirical evidence regarding the impact of family background on the transition from elementary into secondary school. In doing so, three types of secondary effects are distinguished: secondary effects of school grades, teacher recommendations, and the transition itself. The empirical literature suggests that both primary and secondary effects exist in the German school system: In addition to having lower achievement, children from disadvantaged backgrounds receive lower grades and fewer recommendations for higher tracks and are less likely to attend a high track even when controlling for their achievement. The paper closes by presenting findings from studies analyzing the relative importance of primary and secondary effects and a discussion on how effects of family background on the transition into secondary school can be reduced.     

Entwicklungen und Auswirkungen der Schulprofilierung an allgemeinbildenden Schulen in ausgewählten europäischen Ländern und Implementationsperspektiven für Deutschland

Developments and consequences of school profiling in general-education schools in selected European countries and perspectives for implementation in Germany – The development of a school programme, e.g. by way of forming a profile in the field of music or sports, is part of everyday school life in many European state and private schools today and even statutory in some countries and states. This paper focuses on the background and the significance of this development in school politics but also on the potential and the challenges which come with the profile formation of schools on an individual as well as systemic basis. Furthermore, the author introduces and discusses examples for the profile formation of schools and classes by looking at concrete projects. After that, recommendations are given for school programme work in individual schools. The focus is especially on German-speaking countries such as Germany, Austria and Switzerland.     

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.     

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.     

Gesten und Habitus im pädagogischen Gebrauch. Ein historischer Vergleich der Entwicklung von Gesten und Körperhabitus im Unterricht der DDR und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland seit 1945

The authors argue that learning is not only a process basing on speech but as well one of the body. Learning also includes civilizing the body, being able to control the muscles and the emotions and to behave in different contexts. Each institution and culture develops modes of bodily behavour. Institutions like schools, societies and political systems present different models that are to be learned. The question of the following article is that which models for pupils the two German systems had developed and how these where performed by the pupils. The autors show that the model of the diligent pupil was present in both systems, because the behaviour connected to this model is functionally adequate for learning. Western Germany also promoted the model of the “pensive” pupil which was mainly presented for male students. The GDR developed the “socialist pupil personality” that included a political role as an activist and “polytechnics”. But it was difficult to find an own presentation for that. From the sixties on the model ressembled more and more that of the diligent pupil.     

Susanne von Below: Bildungssysteme und soziale Ungleichheit. Das Beispiel der neuen Bundesländer

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Schulbau jenseits der Norm: Hans Scharouns Mädchengymnasium in Lünen

The school building as a form of pedagogy has been paid more attention since it has been considered as a space for living and making experiences and as a ‘third teacher’. Searching for an up‐to‐date school one often looks for schools with a different appearance from normal schools. This is due to the practical purpose of building schools and classrooms in which pupils have a good experience. This article deals with such a different school, presenting an example that has very much influenced the debates about school architecture in Western Germany after 1945. The architect of the school was Hans Scharoun. This example of a building beyond the norm is the contemporary Geschwister‐Scholl‐Gesamtschule (comprehensive school) in Lünen, North Rhine‐Westphalia. This school was built between 1956 and 1962 as a grammar school for girls. From a historical point of view the school is above all interesting because its architecture was connected with pedagogical intentions and hopes that are not dissimilar to such considerations today. The outline of this architecture followed ideas of democratic school architecture that Scharoun presented in 1951 at a conference called ‘Darmstädter Gespräch’ alongside an exhibition about ‘Man and Space’. These ideas were paid much attention and they have become part of the history of school architecture. But as the school system in Germany expanded and school buildings became more rationalized in the 1960s and 1970s they were no longer followed. Thus the grammar school for girls in Lünen is an example of the shift in opinions and trends of school architecture that had been influenced by social developments and education policy. Scharoun, who is well known beyond the borders of Germany for his buildings, is considered a representative of organic architecture. In school architecture this idea of an organic combination of the single parts of a school as if they made up an organism was decisive too. The consequence was that he grouped and concentrated the rooms and that he assigned the form of the rooms to the nature of the activities taking place in them. One group of rooms comprised the class apartments of the female pupils of the lower, middle and upper grades of the school. They were conceptualized in a different way according to the age of the girls. The rooms should emphasize the different stages of development and consciousness of the girls by colour and light. The rooms for the youngest should thus have the character of a nest while the middle groups were characterized by exactness and the higher ones by the peculiar phase of development between childhood and becoming adult. These areas with their more individual and almost private character were designed to be connected with the other parts of the school (classrooms for lessons in science, assembly hall, offices and library) by way of encounter. Thus the connection of the individual and community should not only be symbolized but made possible in the everyday life of the school. The rooms for the girls were formed like pavilions without rectangles. It is characteristic that they were thought of as class apartments. They were intended to form a second home and to provide a feeling of security, of belonging and of protection. Each of these class apartments consisted of a classroom and a wardrobe, a room for the group and an area for teaching in the open air. Although built with the same elements the class apartments for each of the three age groups show differences in the relations of inner and outer area. The different grades of openness were justified by Scharoun according to the different levels of development of the girls. Those for the younger ones would be more open than those for the older ones. Inside, the class apartments achieved a comfortable character through their forms and by use of colours. This was emphasized by the lighting conditions – daylight was dispersed evenly by small high windows around the room beneath the ceiling of the classroom – and by the different height of the rooms. The greater community of the school was reached only by crossing a great hall; the assembly hall and the specialized classrooms were placed nearby. The great break hall was not only an area of movement but was designed as a room for meetings and assemblies. With regard to the class apartments the break hall can be characterized as a public space. This public character was supported by the fact that the school library, the school council and the assembly hall were associated with the break hall. Moreover there were fountains with drinking water, benches, notice boards, showcases, plants and a milk bar within the room – elements that are typical of a public space. The plan of the grammar school for girls in Lünen shows the correspondence of relatively small and shielded class apartments to spacious and generous public rooms. This connection of extraversion and introversion, of inner space and the outside, of openness and unity in Scharoun’s opinion shows most obviously the essence of school. There is no doubt that by following the idea of an organic architecture Scharoun built his school from the pupils’ point of view – but without ever asking them what they wanted. The pupils who would live and learn within these rooms played the main role, not the teachers. Thus the rooms for the teachers were located at the edge of the building. This also makes clear that Scharoun was not interested in rationalizing time and space for the purpose of teaching. On the contrary, he tried to take the knowledge or assumptions concerning the needs of children into account by building the school in order to support their learning. Attachment to the space they should live in, the feeling of well‐being and identification were more relevant to Scharoun than organisational and technological efficiency. When the school was finished it was praised for its polygonal forms that were felt to be a liberation from formal obligations and inflexibility. Only five years after the opening of this school Scharoun’s ideas for school buildings met with little response. They did not stand up to public demands for simpler and cheaper solutions, for rationalized and fixed types and series production of school buildings, which became an item on the agenda following an enormous growth in the number of pupils. It was suggested that Scharoun’s subjective architecture would have regulated the order of the lessons, the relationship between pupils and teachers and their possibilities of participation in school. In opposition to his idea of a democratic school architecture there would be no liberty and no possibility for individual use of the rooms. Everything would be determined and the complex educational situation would have been intolerably simplified. In addition the everyday life of school would have shown that the room for meetings could not be used as Scharoun supposed. The criticism could not be denied and indicated the failure of Scharoun’s plan for a school. But it was not the architecture that failed. It was rather the regulated school with its fixed divisions of time that was not able to appreciate and use the potential offered by the building. After a period of less esteem, Scharoun’s architecture of schools recovered when new debates concerning the quality of life of schools and the aesthetic dimensions of school buildings came into being. In the meantime the school in Lünen is described by the keywords variety, warmth, security, aura. In contrast to the criticism of the 1970s the architecture and the structure of rooms of the grammar school for girls in Lünen are now praised by pupils and teachers for their richness of stimulus and their possibilities for individuality. But there has been no empirical research into the notion and of the use of the building and its rooms by teachers and pupils in everyday life. What can be said almost certainly is that Scharoun’s school in Lünen would be appreciated today with regard to contemporary recommendations for good learning environments for pupils.     

‘Methode’ als Zauberwort für Schulentwicklung: die Wahrnehmung Pestalozzis im philosophischen,schulpädagogischen und bildungspolitischen Diskurs des beginnenden 19. Jahrhunderts,aufgearbeitet anhand dreier ausgewählter Beispiele

Pestalozzi’s international reputation relates closely to the ‘invention’ of his method. Until now historiography has characterized the Burgdorf and Yverdon period as the culminating point of Pestalozzi’s career as educator. This traditional approach causes a rather partial view of this period of his life. However, contextualizing primarily Pestalozzi’s correspondence leads to a new insight: his school projects are strongly connected with other private Swiss or European projects on subjects such as school development and school reform.     

Subjektive Theorien von Lehrkräften über ungünstige Faktoren in der Bildungsbiografie von Schülerinnen und Schülern – Wie konstruieren Lehrkräfte den Übergang von der Schule in die Berufsausbildung?

The transition from school to apprenticeship marks a turning point in the life of teenagers because it can affect the course of their professional careers. Currently, this transition appears to be difficult for many older teenagers. Science deals with factors and conditions which contribute to the complication of this transition process. Teachers and their beliefs play an important role in this process but are largely neglected in the literature. Research has shown that there is a dialectic and dynamic interaction between knowledge and action (i.?e. knowledge is the basis for action). Thus, it is important to investigate the knowledge and beliefs of teachers about the transition from school to apprenticeship. It is documented that beliefs of professionals are underdeveloped in some areas in comparison to the epistemic truth status of scientific knowledge. A certain type of teacher develops an independent and creative professional-action strategy based on his/her beliefs.     

International orientierte höhere Schulen in Deutschland – Zwei Varianten von Internationalität im Wechselspiel von Institution und Schülerbiografie

During the last decades, the education system has been marked by distinct processes of internationalisation. In the field of higher education, there are numerous and varied schools with different international profiles. This paper focuses on processes of internationalisation in the German sector of higher education. We contrast two higher secondary schools with international profiles: one international school in a West German metropolitan region with a long tradition and a younger internationally-profiled school located in the periphery of an East German urban centre. This institutional analysis presents school cultural similarities and differences with regard to different claims and concepts of internationality. This analysis is complemented by a reconstruction of three patterns of biographical meaning examining the internationality of pupils and their respective habitual fit to these internationally-profiled schools. We draw on qualitative data, consisting mainly of interviews with head teachers and pupils of these two schools. We argue that these differing regional forms of internationalisation indicate a stratification and hierarchisation in the field of higher education in Germany.     

Die Förderung schöpferischer Ausdrucksfähigkeit und kritischen Urteilsvermögens in der Schule Unesco-Institut für Pädagogik,Hamburg, Januar 1962

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Prüfungen und Leistungsbeurteilung in der Schule,Unesco-Institut für Pädagogik,Hamburg, März 1957

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Kämpfen gegen Windmühlen und reale Mächte: William Lottigs Tagebuch (1919–1921) als Ausdruck der politischen,pädagogischen und schulinternen Machverhältnisse in einer Hamburger Gemeinschaftsschule zu Beginn der 1920er Jahre

In his daily journal on the founding of the public experimental school, a “community school” at the Berliner Tor in Hamburg between spring 1919 and September 1921, Lottig describes the everyday issues confronting the principal of the “new school” at that time. These concern classroom instruction, teachers, parents, external pressures on the Berliner Tor-School, the relationship with the school administration, political issues prevalent in Hamburg at that time, ideological and philosophical debates as well as personal and family relationship problems, all of which Lottig describes in his journal. Lottig also noted the reasoning underpinning the development of the school experiments: the “old” schools in Hamburg had been closed, and the state had in their place established experimental schools. The journal clearly records the difficulties, issues and successes of a principal of one of the newly established community schools (Lebensgemeinschaftsschulen), which had been established as experimental schools. A perusal of the diary indicates that Jakob Robert Schmid’s sole and up to now only one known analysis of the journal comes off as biased and misleading. Schmid, professor of education at the University of Berne, had, at the beginning of the 1930s, only perused and analysed those portions of Lottig’s journal in which Lottig describes the rather turbulent if inspiring – and yet chaotic – operation of the community school in its first two years. While Schmid analysed these portions, he did not consider Lottig’s other, more favourable and constructive comments. Schmid also did not explain his one-sided selection of journal passages. Schmid brands Lottig and his team of teachers as educational novices and classifies the Berliner Tor-School as an “anti-authoritarian” institution, an experimental school like any other school experiment which overshoots the mark, not being educationally and institutionally meaningful. A more objective and principled approach in examining Lottig’s journal would have revealed that Lottig and his teachers were well aware of the main issue confronting the school, an issue that Schmid would also have found relevant: the relation of freedom and compulsion, within a setting that Lottig wanted to revitalise, to productively equilibrate without employing the customary disciplinary instruments. Lottig furthermore again and again points emphatically to the “growing pains” of all alternative schools (even when regulated by the state as an experimental school), whose goal it had been, to establish, even under difficult circumstances, a “new school-type” not utilising the traditional instruments of discipline, instruction and school management. This proves that Lottig was neither an educational ignoramus nor unaware of the basic issue of classroom instruction: how one can instruct with or without compulsion. Lottig’s goal had always been – and this Schmid also disregarded – to replace traditional, imposed, mandated or even self-imposed rules and regulations by new, commonly worked out rules. Lottig’s journal is a good example of the steadfast, unrelenting and energy-sapping aspiration of a school principal to balance the relation of school management versus a school’s self-development under the given circumstances. In addition, Schmid’s misinterpretation is a good example of how an observer, who hardly knew the Berliner Tor-School, would misuse this historical source by means of a biased interpretation to further his own views on scholastic education, views that Lottig himself would have preferred to provocatively examine – Schmid’s “authoritative pedagogy”, which goes beyond all authoritarian and non-authoritarian educational policies. What, then, would Lottig have recorded in his journal about a meeting with Schmid?     

Elterliche Bildungsaspiration und Migrationshintergrund als Prädiktoren für Schulformwechsel in der Sekundarstufe I: Ergebnisse einer Längsschnittstudie

The present study investigates the extent to which changing school forms in secondary school is dependent not only on a student’s school grades, but also on the migration status and educational aspirations of their parents. Based on a cohort (N?=?4219) of school students from one school year in Luxemburg, we were able to show that throughout the lower secondary school, the grade average played a decisive role in the move to a different school form. Furthermore, students with a migration background were shown to have similar chances as students from Luxemburg of moving upwards to a higher school form, yet were less likely to move downwards. However, this phenomenon could essentially be explained by the fact that students with a migration background are not as highly represented in the higher school forms as are students from Luxemburg. Independent of migration status and school grades, parental educational aspirations played a decisive role change between school forms. High educational aspirations facilitated the move to a higher school form, while low educational aspirations correlated with moving to a lower school form.     

Testgütekriterien der „Profilanalyse nach Grießhaber“. Evaluation eines Verfahrens zur Erfassung grammatischer Fähigkeiten von ein- und mehrsprachigen Grundschulkindern

A diagnostic goal of the “Profile analysis according to Grießhaber” is the assessment of the grammatical ability to place verbs in German sentences in the correct syntactical position. To evaluate the test quality for the first time, 403 monolingual and multilingual primary school children were randomly assigned to three different test materials: Test material that specifically stimulated the target competence led to the best test results. This indicates a low objectivity of application. In addition, ceiling effects for primary school children were detected, which means that the profile analysis can only slightly differentiate among the grammatical abilities of the children. Retest reliability and objectivity of analysis are also too small. In summary, the test quality of the assessment tool should be improved with respect to all of the test quality criteria considered. Hence, we recommend standardizing the profile analysis better and adding more sensitive diagnostic criteria for primary school aged children. Other aspects of profile analysis, for example the improvement of diagnostic competencies of teachers, are recommended for future research.     

Risikokonstellationen in der frühen Kindheit: Auswirkungen biologischer und psychologischer Vulnerabilitäten sowie psychosozialer Stressoren auf kindliche Entwicklungsverläufe

Risk factors in early childhood have short as well as long term effects on child development. Researchers distinguish between vulnerabilities, which are biological predispositions and psychological characteristics of the child, and stressors, which are psychosocial circumstances in the environment. Crucial vulnerabilities and stressors are described and evaluated in the following essay. The number of influencing risk factors seems to be the best predictor to evaluate the impact on the developmental outcome. Thus, a combination of cumulative long lasting risk factors has the most negative impact on child development. The qualities of parent-child interactions and the enrichment of the (home) environment are the only factors which have a direct impact on child development. Therefore, interventions to minimize the influence of risk constellations should begin early, be long lasting and should focus on assuring a secure relationship for the child, in or outside the family.