Ad-personam-Projekte gemäß § 26 UG 2002 und andere Formen der Universitätsforschung durch Einzelpersonen

Im Hinblick auf die zu geringe finanzielle Grundausstattung ist die universitäre Forschung heute stärker denn je auf Forschungsförderungen und Forschungsaufträge angewiesen. Die vorliegende Arbeit stellt Möglichkeiten und Voraussetzungen der Drittmittelforschung durch Einzelpersonen praxisorientiert dar und bietet auch Lösungen für die heiklen Themenbereiche, Kostenersatz und Immaterialgüterrecht.     

Children’s right to religion and spirituality: legal,educational and practical perspectives1

The attempt to establish children’s rights can be called one of the major twentieth‐century projects, with the 1989 United Nations Convention on Children’s Rights as one of its most important results. Yet while the issue of spiritual development has played a clear role in the struggle for children’s rights ever since the ground‐breaking Geneva Declaration of the 1920s, the 1989 declaration does not include a clear reference to children’s right to religion or spirituality. The aim of the present article is to investigate the possibilities for establishing such a right, not only in legal terms but also on pedagogical grounds and in terms of religious education. How can children’s needs be taken seriously, for example, vis‐à‐vis death and dying? How does a children’s rights perspective affect the understanding of religious education? What could a more formally established right to religion and spirituality really mean for the child, as well as for educational institutions? The article discusses such questions in conversation with educational authors such as Janusz Korczak, the pioneer of ‘children’s right to respect’, as well as with psychological theories of individual, social and religious or spiritual development.     

The ‘One‐Phase’ Approach to Teacher Education in West Germany

The besetting weakness of teacher education in the Federal Republic is seen as the separation of theoretical and practical aspects of training; this separation is institutionalised in the ‘two‐phase’ structure which is universally adopted in West Germany. The ‘one‐phase’, experimental, programme developed at the University of Oldenburg in the late 1970s appeared to overcome this problem, but was aborted by a (political) decision to end the experiment. Although full evaluation had not been completed the article examines some of the factors accounting for the apparent success of the ‘ELAB’ innovation.     

One task,divergent solutions: high- versus low-status sources and social comparison guide adaptation in a computer-supported socio-cognitive conflict task

This experimental study extends conflict elaboration theory (1) by revealing social influence dynamics for a knowledge-rich computer-supported socio-cognitive conflict task not investigated in the context of this theory before and (2) by showing the impact of individual differences in social comparison orientation. Students in two conditions (N = 59) compared their self-created task solution with a partly correct solution presented additionally, deviating from their solution. The other solution’s source was introduced either as a low status source (“peer”) or as a high status source (“textbook”) whereas the presented solution was identical. In a baseline condition, this comparison possibility was missing. Students in the textbook condition experienced more socio-cognitive conflict and adapted their solution more often to the correct aspect of the presented solution than students in the peer condition. Students low in social comparison orientation adapted their solution more extensively in the textbook condition than in the peer condition.     

Children's intuitive mathematics: the development of knowledge about nonlinear growth

This study is concerned with the development of children's intuitive understanding of nonlinear processes. The ability to estimate linear and exponential growth was examined in 7-, 9-, 11-, and 13-year-old children and adults (N=160). Whereas linear growth was judged correctly at all ages, estimations of exponential growth were in line with mathematically correct values only in 13-year-olds and adults. However, 9-year-olds already judged the result of exponential growth as being significantly higher than that of linear growth, and even a remarkable proportion of 7-year-olds showed such discrimination between the two types of functions. Results point to the existence of an early intuitive knowledge about the characteristics of nonlinear growth, long before those functions are taught in school.     

Learn by doing: How to include new requirements of research in engineering education

Co-operation between university and industry for technology transfer is not only useful for industry, but also for students. In the Fraunhofer Institute of the author, about 40 projects annually for individual companies as well as co-operative research projects with many partners for international programmes such as EUREKA, ESPRIT and LEONARDO are carried out. Students are involved in many ways, as part-time assistants or during their intermediate and diploma thesis projects as well as PhD theses, and contribute significantly to the research and development. By being members of a team of professionals they learn about their later work in industry to the extent that they get ideas for planning their careers and even consider becoming entrepreneurs themselves.     

Research in Religious Education: Perspectives for the Future

The impact of committed guests in Religious Education at school is focused in this study. Ten pupils (age 17) were sampled to contribute as informants in semi-structured interviews. The data consist of eight texts (interview excerpts), which are interpreted within a hermeneutic approach, specifically by taking the formal features into consideration (cf. Ricoeur), for example, the occurrence of negations. Some of the texts illuminate I–Thou relations (Buber), whereas other texts are interpreted in relation to the effect histories of certain conceptions (Gadamer).