Stichwort: Kompetenzentwicklung im Grundschulalter

Keyword: Development of Competencies During Elementary School. The development of scholastic competencies is a topic discussed in the cross-section between the fields of developmental psychology, education, and educational psychology. This article will attempt an overview of the development of competencies during elementary school. After a conceptual clarification of the term competency, the focus will turn to the development of scholastic competencies at elementary school level from a development psychology perspective. Following this, the developmental changes within four basic competence domains, which are central topics of current research, are described: reading, writing, mathematics, and science. Factors affecting the development of scholastic competencies are then discussed, including individual (intelligence, prior knowledge, language) as well as environmental determinants (family, quality of instruction, classroom composition). General as well as differential changes in the four domains are described and illustrated by empirical research results.     

Intercultural learning in English as foreign language instruction: The importance of teachers’ intercultural experience and the usefulness of precise instructional directives

The development of intercultural competence, especially in foreign language instruction, is considered a key goal of teaching in German schools. The present article sheds light on the teaching of intercultural topics in the context of English as a foreign language (EFL). It presents the results of an analysis of data from a larger study (DESI study – Assessment of Student Achievements in German and English as a Foreign Language) bringing the intercultural experience of teachers and observable aspects of instruction into focus. Videotapes of EFL-classroom instruction of 9th and 10th grade students are analyzed in order to assess characteristic of the implementation of intercultural topics. The study reveals the impact of teachers’ intercultural experience on the quality of their intercultural instruction. Furthermore, the results indicate that precise external directives for particular lessons can help teachers put intercultural topics into practice.     

The role of classroom differences in achievement changes

A combined criterion involving the regression slopes of pretest-posttest achievement scores and achievement gain scores was used to classify similar types of classrooms. Mathematics achievement differences among 632 fifth graders were analysed in a longitudinal design and explained in a structural equation framework provided by LISREL, separately for four types of classrooms. The results replicated the findings of an earlier study (Schneider & Treiber, 1984) in that the local nature of achievement models could be demonstrated. That is, the structural components of the causal models could not be generalized across the four groups of classrooms. The inclusion of a second grouping criterion (i. e., achievement gain) proved useful in that a better model fit was always obtained for classrooms with high achievement agains. As a global model test ignoring group and classroom membership did mask the differential validity of the achievement model in the various subgroups, the need for multilevel approaches was emphasized.     

Gender and doctoral studies: the perceptions of Ph.D. students in an American university

Twenty students enrolled in Ph.D. programmes were interviewed to examine the role of gender in their academic experiences. Gender was examined in three ways: gender of the student, gender of the student’s faculty supervisor and gender make‐up of the faculty within the student’s department or academic unit. All students reported the importance of supportive faculty mentors and that financial worries, time pressure and the uncertainty of future employment were sources of stress. Family formation and striving toward personal as well as professional goals were particularly of concern for women, as were perceptions of differential treatment. Women students valued women faculty mentors, although female faculty were perceived as less supportive than male faculty of family concerns when these women had themselves sacrificed family formation for the sake of their careers. Both men and women experienced less stress and reported greater career commitment when faculty in their departments exhibited less traditional values regarding the balancing of personal and professional goals. The implications of these findings for reducing doctoral student attrition rates and for creating a more supportive environment for Ph.D. students are discussed.     

A longitudinal analysis of the interaction of self-concept of aptitude and math achievement in elementary school children

European Journal of Psychology of Education -     

Observer ratings of instructional quality: Do they fulfill what they promise?

Despite considerable interest in the topic of instructional quality in research as well as practice, little is known about the quality of its assessment. Using generalizability analysis as well as content analysis, the present study investigates how reliably and validly instructional quality is measured by observer ratings. Twelve trained raters judged 57 videotaped lesson sequences with regard to aspects of domain-independent instructional quality. Additionally, 3 of these sequences were judged by 390 untrained raters (i.e., student teachers and teachers). Depending on scale level and dimension, 16–44% of the variance in ratings could be attributed to instructional quality, whereas rater bias accounted for 12–40% of the variance. Although the trained raters referred more often to aspects considered essential for instructional quality, this was not reflected in the reliability of their ratings. The results indicate that observer ratings should be treated in a more differentiated manner in the future.     

Quality of instruction and achievement outcomes

This chapter reviews the fundamental assumptions, main results, and major problems of research on instructional quality and cognitive student outcomes. Although considerable progress has been made in this field of research, the present theoretical state, encompassing mostly simple process-product relations, is far from satisfactory. Findings from our own research demonstrate that it is both necessary and fruitful to expand the simple process-product paradigm by including cumulative, interactive, compensatory, and contextual effects.     

Value orientations and motivational interference in school-leisure conflict: The case of Vietnam

The experience of motivational interference during studying and leisure in a school-leisure conflict and its relationship to pupils' value orientations were investigated in a self-report study of Vietnamese pupils (N = 346, mean age = 15 years). The results were compared with a combined sample consisting of pupils from nine other countries (N = 2155). From a cross-cultural perspective, the mean values of the variables show that Vietnamese pupils differ with regard to their values and motivational interference from pupils in other countries. Within the Vietnamese sample, modern value orientation was positively related to decision for a studying activity in a school-leisure conflict and to experience of motivational interference during a leisure activity and negatively related to interference during studying. For post-modern value orientation, the relationships were mostly reversed. Despite differences between sample means, the consistency in the relationships between the variables across the samples indicates that the pattern of relationships can be generalized.