Mental Health in School

The project “Mental Health in School” is part of the German Centre for Mental Health (DZPG) and a cooperation project between the sites Bochum/Marburg/Frankfurt. The project focuses on the implementation of an online platform (Youth Mental Health platform) for children, youth and practitioners to provide easy access to cross-departmental and specific assessments and methods to support mental health specifically in the school context. The main goal is to develop a successful framework to distribute evidence-based interventions to the target groups in preschool, school (and clinical settings). Specific needs within the school/clinical context for youth with mental disorders are identified and provided through a participative process including different councils (Living Environment School & Day Care Council, Youth Council, Affected Person and Relatives Council).

Main goals of the Youth Mental Health platform are:

Establishing a network of educational partner institutions, counseling centers (preschools, school networks, psychosocial institutions) and self-help groups as a recruitment base for epidemiological, etiological and controlled translational field studies;
Developing a living database (e.g. through interaction with a chatbot) with interdisciplinary and specific assessments and methods;
Generating and implementing a monitoring system for educational institutions, out-of-school and clinical settings;
Developing a successful framework to distribute evidence-based interventions to the target groups in preschool, school (and clinical settings).

INSIDE

In two project phases, INSIDE provides comprehensive and reliable information for the first time on the current implementation of school inclusion at lower secondary level and on the transition of pupils with special educational needs to upper secondary level, the vocational training system or another life situation. INSIDE creates a sound data basis by surveying various groups of people involved in inclusion, such as children and young people with and without special educational needs, parents, teachers, school management and school support staff. On the one hand, this can contribute to the creation of a basis for political objectives to promote inclusion in everyday school life and at the transition to education and work, and on the other hand it is made available to the scientific community for further research purposes.

Exchange of metadata

Ongoing exchange of metadata with continuous updates between ZPID reference database PSYNDEX and information infrastructures hosted at the DIPF (German Education Server und German Education Index | FIS Bildung Literaturdatenbank [only in German]). Exchange includes information and scientific publications from German-speaking countries in the fields of (a) Educational Psychology and (b) selected basic subjects of psychology.

LAP

In what way are teacher education students different from other students with regards to their interests, occupational orientation, and previous educational biographies? To what extent are teacher education students equipped with domain-specific basic competencies such as, for example, reading competence as well as mathematical competence and scientific literacy? And how are study progress and success connected to the level of these competencies? How does the perceived quality of the preparatory service (“Referendariat”) affect the professional career? And does the professional self-concept change during the course of this second training period?

With the continuation of an additional sample of teacher education students from the NEPS Starting Cohort 5 and by adding survey content specific to the teaching profession to this investigation it will be possible to answer these and similar research questions. Due to its longitudinal approach following teacher education students from the beginning of their studies to their professional lives and also taking into account their life course prior to studying, the project will considerably improve the data pool regarding teacher education. The collected database will be made available as an infrastructure service to the national and international research community.

MILES

The common reference points of this network were the Hamburg-based longitudinal studies LAU (Aspekte der Lernausgangslage und Lernentwicklung, Aspects of Learning Background and Learning Development) and KESS (Kompetenzen und Einstellungen von Schülerinnen und Schülern, Competencies and Attitudes of Students), which have been conducted by the Free and Hanseatic city of Hamburg starting in 1995. Both studies followed a complete cohort of students from Grade 5 until the general qualification for university entrance (Abitur) or the end of their apprenticeship. LAU and KESS included achievement tests as well as questionnaires on personal characteristics, school and instruction, and students’ family background.

LAU and KESS have been documented in descriptive reports and in a few in-depth analyses of selected issues. As is true of many data sets in the field of empirical educational research, the analytic potential of the LAU and KESS data is far from exhausted. Against this backdrop, the scientific consortium MILES was established in the summer of 2012 under the leadership of Prof. Olaf Köller. In accordance with an agreement between Hamburg’s Ministry of Schools and Vocational Training (Behörde für Schule und Berufsbildung, BSB) and the IPN – Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education, the LAU and KESS data have been made available to the MILES consortium for the purpose of conducting more detailed secondary analyses. Beginning in the winter of 2012/13, the data sets were gradually transferred to the IPN. Since then, the documentation of the studies has been revised and completed. The rescaling of achievement data was completed with the goal of creating a scaling model that is consistent across all measurement points and the two studies. The RemoteMILES system was created as a way of making it possible to store the data at a central location and facilitating cooperation among the consortium members as they analyze the data. At the same time, members of the consortium have been identifying and discussing issues that the LAU and KESS data may be particularly helpful in analyzing. Focus areas included family-related interventions (tutoring, year abroad), school effectiveness and certain aspects of instruction (particularly bilingual instruction), as well as social disparities in academic success over the course of the school years. Either implicitly or explicitly, the research projects also addressed methodological challenges related to the elaborate study design. The members of the MILES consortium agreed on seven research projects to be conducted using the LAU and KESS data.

Hector

Since 2010 sixty Hector children academies have been created in the state of Baden-Württemberg with the financial funding of the Hector-Stiftung II in order to support highly gifted primary school students. The academic support and scientific monitoring is designed as a formative evaluation, so that vital findings of associated studies can be directly integrated into the work of the children academies.

The overall aim of the project is to examine to what extent the children academies contribute to a positive development of the talented and highly gifted primary school students. Furthermore the project aims at drawing generalizable findings that can later be used in the development and support of highly gifted children.

Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID)

The Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) is the supra-regional research support facility for psychology in German-speaking countries. It supports the entire scientific work process, from literature research and study planning to data collection and analyses to documentation, archiving and publication of results. The services offered by ZPID are based on an ideal-type research cycle.

ZPID is committed to the idea of open science and sees itself as a public open science institute for psychology. As a research-based support institution, ZPID conducts research on “science acceptance”, “psychological metascience”, and “big data in psychology”.

Important projects:

In its reference database PSYNDEX, ZPID documents scientific publications from the field of psychology and other scientific disciplines (e.g., educational and social sciences) related to educational research.
ZPID’s reference database PSYNDEX Tests contains diagnostic tools from the field of educational psychology as well as related fields of application (e.g., pedagogics, curative education, speech therapy) which are well-suited for applications in educational assessment. The Open test Archive offers a number of free assessment tools for research purposes.
The Research Data Center (RDC) supports researchers in psychology and related disciplines in the quality-assured curation of research data and offers various access routes for the scientific use of these data corpora.The RDC supports both research-related (DataWiz) and downstream documentation and archiving of research data via the psychology repository PsychArchives.
The Institute participates in research work on the monitoring of educational research in Germany.
In the research area Science Acceptance, the team investigates how people think about science and how they evaluate researchers and their findings. This area includes the Science Reception Lab led by Jun.-Prof. Dr. Marlene Altenmüller, the Social Influence Lab of the director Prof. Dr. Kai Sassenberg, and research projects coordinated by Dr. Tom Rosman.
The research area Psychological Metascience summarizes the findings of psychological research, examines their robustness, and analyzes how results are influenced by various factors. The area includes the Metascience Lab led by Jun.-Prof. Dr. Kinga Bierwiaczonek, as well as research projects led by Dr. Tanja Burgard and Dr. André Bittermann.
In the research area Big Data in Psychology, they investigate how theory-driven research can improve Big Data methods and how these methods can generate new insights for psychology. The area currently includes the Moral Computing Lab led by Jun.-Prof. Dr. Frederic Hopp.

University of Luxembourg

At the associated partner “University of Luxembourg” is the research group „Educational Processes in Contemporary Societies“ consisting of members from two Institutes devoted to educational research. It connects social scientific perspectives on education and learning processes (educational theory, philosophy, history, and sociology). The main focus is on educational policies, systems, and processes within particular cultural, political, and socio-economic contexts. Thus, particular importance is placed on historical, cross-national, and international perspectives. Objects of study, whether in quantitative or qualitative or historical and institutional analyses, are education policies, system development, learning processes and teaching, and learning within and outside educational organizations.

Activities:

The activities of the research group include editing journals and book series, contributing to national education reports (Germany, Luxembourg), organizing international conferences, evaluation and consulting in a range of countries and advisory board membership.

Mercator Institute for Literacy and Language Education

The Mercator Institute for Literacy and Language Education is an institute of the University of Cologne, initiated and funded by Stiftung Mercator. Its aim is to improve language education. To achieve this objective, it researches and develops innovative concepts, measures and tools for language education. It provides regional training for prospective teachers and national training for educators in nurseries, schools and adult education, and prepares academic findings specifically for decision-makers in educational policy, administration and practice. Through its research and the academic services it provides to language education in a multilingual society, the Mercator Institute helps create more equal opportunities in the education system.

Important work and services:

Research: The Mercator Institute for Language Support and German as a Second Language researches and develops concepts, instruments and measures for language education in a variety of projects. It conducts practical and application-oriented research on current and socially relevant issues of language education, from daycare to the transition to work. Its research covers the entire breadth and complexity of linguistic education: It focuses on the chain of effects from research to the training and continuing education of specialists and teachers, the framework conditions in the various educational institutions, implementation in educational practice, and the effects on children and young people. The research focuses on linguistic learning and development processes, classroom research, and teacher training and professionalization. The project teams use both qualitative and quantitative methods and are interdisciplinary. The institute also offers research-based services.

Development: The Mercator Institute advises educational actors on the basis of scientific findings relating to development and implementation processes, e.g. curricula or for the realization of language education concepts. In doing so, its objective is to help initiate systemic changes that will allow consistent language education standards to be maintained throughout all educational stages and institutions.

Professional Development: When it comes to staff development of educators in nursery schools, schools and adult education, the Mercator Institute cooperates with institutions at a regional and national level so as to develop and implement staff development concepts. Due to time constraints and the considerable need for continuing education, educators are increasingly calling for training courses that can be adapted to their individual schedules. This is why the Mercator Institute is also developing digital learning opportunities that combine independent learning with digital materials and face-to-face classes.

Transfer: There are many different stakeholders in language education: from the organizations that run child and youth welfare services, to nurseries and schools, and to ministries and authorities at the local and state level. Through its publications and events, the Mercator Institute promotes the transfer of good practice and scientific findings to education policymakers, education authorities and the educational institutions themselves. In addition, it is available to journalists as a point of contact for topics relating to language education. Current research into topical and socially relevant questions of language education is analysed and then made available in a variety of formats – from short basic knowledge and fact checks to detailed studies and expert reports.

Promotion of young researchers: At the Mercator Institute, there are various measures to promote young researchers. These include AcadeMI, a network of young researchers who meet in a self-coordinated manner and at regular intervals to promote peer exchange at the Mercator Institute and to support each other in their own qualification. Among other things, they organize workshops that all young researchers can profitably use for their work, and they are involved in the implementation of the annual Young Researchers Conference. Within the framework of AcadeMI, some staff members have joined together to form four internal research groups dealing with the topic of multilingualism and vocabulary. In addition, there is a mentoring program.

Research Data at the Mercator Institute:

The Research Database “Lernertexte” (FD-LEX) provides educational researchers access to over 6,200 texts by students of various ages that were collected in different writing projects. Transcripts and handwritten originals as well as anonymized metadata of the participants can be used for own research projects.

Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology (LIN)

Research at the LIN is dedicated to the study of brain mechanisms of learning and memory and their pathophysiological dysfunction. The unique interdisciplinary approach comprises molecular biological, cellular and systems physiological as well as behavioural and cognitive aspects of brain processes.

The institute was founded in 1992. In 2011 it moved into the new institute building. It is structured into four departments, six research groups, and five special labs.

Main research topics are:

Interaction of attention, motivation, and learning in human behavior, both in healthy volunteers and in patients with dysfunctions in evaluation and motivation,
Stereotactic neurosurgery and Deep Brain Stimulation,
Systems physiology of acoustic pattern processing including language and learning plasticity in the auditory cortex,
Discovery of novel molecular components in CNS synapses, their topological organization, and functional interplay in neuronal signaling processes.

The Research Groups are headed by young scientists. Their research is complementary to the departments and devoted to mechanisms of visual attention and plasticity, to plasticity-related molecules and signaling pathways within neurons, to Systems Biology of learning in Drosophila, and to the pathophysiology and pharmacology of cerebral ischemia.

The special labs for Electron and Laser Scanning Microscopy, Molecular Biological Techniques, Neurogenetics, Primate Neurobiology and Non- Invasive Brain Imaging provide state-of-the-art technology and know-how for the research groups and departments and work on their own third party-funded scientific projects nonetheless.

The LIN is a cornerstone of the Magdeburg science campus „Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences“ (CBBS). LIN scientists are involved in four DFG-funded Collaborative Research Centres „Neurobiology of motivated Behaviour“ and „Molecular Organisation of Cellular Communication in the Immune System“, „A Companion Technology for Cognitive Technical Systems“ and „The Active Auditory System“.

The Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology launched its own PhD program comprising the „SynAGE Graduate Program“ and the Marie Curie Initial Training Network „N-Plast“.