main research area: education

Empirical Research in Education PISA and it´s consequences


An experiment in a fifth grade chemistry lesson, set up by scientists from the Teaching and Learning of Science research training group.

Deficiencies in the German education system came to light most recently in international school attainment assessments. The issues raised by these studies are the topic of investigation by researchers in education science, subject education and instructional psychology. The UDE, one of the main teacher training centres in North Rhine-Westphalia, has adopted this research as one of its main areas.

The decision was clearly justified, with the German Research Foundation (DFG) pledging a level of third-party support that is unprecedented nationwide. The working groups conducting empirical research into schools and other institutions within the education system have been combined in the Centre for Empirical Educational Research (ZeB). At the core of its activities are the DFG Research Unit and Research Training Group Teaching and Learning of Science, and contributions to the DFG Priority Programme Models of processes for the assessment of individual learning outcomes and the evaluation of educational processes.

The ZeB actively promotes the training of future generations of researchers by helping young academics to participate in DFG-funded research. Interdisciplinary cooperation is strengthened by the researchers in subject education, education science and instructional psychology working together to develop medium and longer-term goals for their research.

Researchers at the ZeB analyse subject education, with a focus on science subjects, early-stage mathematics and religion, and describe specific teaching and learning processes. They consider the knowledge base of pupils in a given subject, but also investigate the effects of teaching methods, teaching strategies and interaction between teachers and learners on the expected learning processes and outcomes. They describe not only the conditions for optimal learning processes but also the effect of these processes. In order to do this, they need knowledge of the school system and organisation of the individual school, the conditions and forms of teaching, individual learning processes, and the effect of continuing professional development for teachers.

The research findings not only help to define the basic principles of teaching, learning and lesson processes, but increasingly also to directly improve the quality of education. This coincides with a change in thinking at state school administration level. In the past, its decisions were guided by a belief that an adequate learning environment could be created by providing schools with a sufficient number of well-trained teaching staff, teaching and learning materials, buildings and curriculums. However, this approach was called into question repeatedly during the nineteen nineties: firstly, by the advent of "semiautonomous schools", which were introduced to varying degrees in all Germany's federal states; and secondly by the results of comparative national and international studies, which collectively put a question mark over the effectiveness of the traditional methods of input and process control.

The discussion prompted by TIMSS, IGLU and PISA has led to the development of quality standards which can be measured against set targets. Here, target competences rather than lesson content are used to measure an institution's performance in education, didactics and subject teaching. This approach has increased pressure on the state to equip its schools to offer as many pupils as possible a good chance of achieving the required competence targets. In order to do this, the conditions for good teaching and educational practice must be clearly defined.

Education experts refer to the move in the education system from input optimisation to output optimisation as a paradigm shift, away from a description of resources and towards an evaluation of the effects of education. The ZeB takes a scientific approach to these issues and creates a practical and politically relevant basis for discussion with its findings.

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