Exzellenz und Elitenbildung in Gymnasien. Traditionen und Innovationen

Even after the leveling of the three types of German ‘Gymnasien’, there are still traditional ways of gaining excellence: Latin in addition to English from the 5th school year, the bilingual models and the elite schools for particularly talented students in sports, music or art. Accelerated by the ‘PISA shock’ since the upper secondary school system in Germany has been differentiated and hierarchized by highly selective gifted classes, special schools and boarding schools for high performance at a level above the regular secondary schools.This kind of exclusivity generated by the German ‘Gymnasium’s’ performance excellence is supplemented to an exclusivity through school choice in the currently greatly expand of the German private school system. In addition to the church- and denominational-funded ‘traditional schools’ and schools based on concepts of progressive education, new all-day school complexes with bilingual education, international curricula and qualifications are, especially in the “global cities” (eg Frankfurt) emerged. They mainly serve a wealthy and education-oriented parenthood, distinguishing their selves by internationality and contributing to further diversification of higher education by choosing such schools.     

Pre-service secondary teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge for the teaching of mathematical modelling

Educational Studies in Mathematics - The article deals with the pedagogical content knowledge of mathematical modelling as part of the professional competence of pre-service teachers. With the help...     

Parents’ Perceptions of Child Care for Children with Disabilities

Sixteen Minnesota families with children with disabilities participated in a 2-year interview study of their care experiences. Findings show that families developed a network of care providers, struggled to pay additional costs for care, were not informed of community services and programs, and believed that their children received adequate child care. This study highlights the need to provide information to families and providers and to link services in both rural and urban communities.

Assessing coaches’ professional knowledge

Professional competency of sport and exercise coaches has been conceptualised differently depending on the theoretical and methodical approach taken. To date, no model of professional coaching competency has been agreed upon. The aim of this study was to develop a competency model for sport coaches drawing on well-known competency models developed in the context of teacher education and to empirically assess parts of the model. We developed an initial pool of 295 multiple choice items and administered them to a sample of 531 youths (mean age: 16.2 years) directly after they had completed the German Football Association’s (Deutscher Fußball-Bund) “Junior Coach in Schule und Verein” (Junior Coach for Schools and Clubs) training programme. Results of analyses of one-, two-, five-, and six-dimensional models by means of Rasch scaling indicate that the data are best represented by either a two- or a five-dimensional model depending on the fit criteria chosen. While content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge are presented in the two-dimensional model, the five-dimensional model allows discrimination among football-specific content knowledge, basic content knowledge of training science, basic content knowledge of first aid and pedagogical content knowledge of planning training sessions and instructional/methodological pedagogical knowledge. Further investigation should be made into the suitability of competency models developed in the context of teacher evaluation for modelling the competency of sport coaches and into the extent to which such models can be extrapolated to various sports.     

Counseling University Instructors Based on Student Evaluations of Their Teaching Effectiveness: A Multilevel Test of its Effectiveness Under Consideration of Bias and Unfairness Variables

Counseling instructors using evaluations made by their students has shown to be a fruitful approach to enhancing teaching quality. However, prior experimental studies are questionable in terms of external validity. Therefore, we conducted a non-experimental intervention study in which all of the courses offered by a specific department at a German university were evaluated twice with a standardized student evaluation questionnaire (HILVE-II; overall 44 instructors, 140 courses, and 2,546 student evaluations). Additionally, twelve full time instructors received counseling after the first measurement point. Long-term effects over a period of 2 years and transfer effects to other courses were analyzed using multi-level analyses with three levels. Possible influences by bias and unfairness variables were controlled for. Our results indicate a moderate to large effect of counseling on teaching quality. In conclusion, if students’ evaluations are accompanied by counseling based on the evaluation results, they present a useful method to assure and increase teaching quality in higher education.     

Self-regulation of motivation when learning online: the importance of who, why and how

Successful online students must learn and maintain motivation to learn. The Self-regulation of Motivation (SRM) model (Sansone and Thoman 2005) suggests two kinds of motivation are essential: Goals-defined (i.e., value and expectancy of learning), and experience-defined (i.e., whether interesting). The Regulating Motivation and Performance Online (RMAPO) project examines implications using online HTML lessons. Initial project results suggested that adding usefulness information (enhancing goals-defined motivation) predicted higher engagement levels (enhancing experience), which in turn predicted motivation (interest) and performance (HTML quiz) outcomes. The present paper examined whether individual interest in computers moderated these results. When provided the utility value information, students with higher (relative to lower) individual interest tended to display higher engagement levels, especially when usefulness was framed in terms of personal versus organizational applications. In contrast, higher engagement levels continued to positively predict outcomes regardless of individual interest. We discuss implications for designing optimal online learning environments.