The ifo Education Survey was developed by the ifo Center for the Economics of Education as part of the project “The political economy of education policy: Insights from an opinion survey” funded by the Leibniz Association. The ifo Education Survey is based on an annual public opinion survey of over 4,000 individuals who constitute a representative sample of Germany’s adult population.
The results of the ifo Education Survey in can be found on the website of ifo Institute.
PIAAC-L was the nationwide long-term study of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) in Germany. The project was conducted by a consortium consisting of GESIS, the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at the DIW Berlin, and LIfBi. Test takers from PIAAC in Germany and their families were re-interviewed three more times between 2014 and 2017, respectively subjected to alternative competence measures.
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.
The project “Interventions for Improving Language Skills in Three to Six-Year-Old Children in Day-Care Facilities in German-Speaking Countries: A Systematic Review ” aimed to give an overview over which interventions exist for improving language skills in the children’s first language and national language of instruction in German-speaking countries. Moreover, it was reviewed the current knowledge regarding which language intervention approaches will (or can) deliver which effects in the context of specific institutional and individual conditions.
Language competencies are among the prerequisites for individual success in education. In Germany, children with delays in language development or children with an immigrant background whose native tongue is not the language of instruction bear a significantly higher risk of experiencing poorer school and vocational progress than might be expected given their general cognitive skills. Consequently, unrestrained participation in society is endangered owing to delays in the cognitive, emotional and social development of the children concerned.
Policy makers in Germany have recognised that society needs to foster educationally relevant language competencies even in very young children, a need that has recently gained in urgency by the arrival and likely stay of large groups of refugees from war zones in Asia and Africa. As yet, it remains an open question, however, how to best proceed: Which language intervention approaches will (or can) deliver which effects in the context of specific institutional and individual conditions?
The proposed project aimed to remedy the situation and to systematically document and integrate the available information about successfully tried and tested language interventions.
What defines a good teacher? Not only is this the topic of the study but it is also a frequent matter of public debate. As of yet educational research lacks a clear theoretical concept and an instrument derived therefrom which renders educational and psychological knowledge empirically accessible.
This was the starting point of the ThinK research program which, devided into three sub-projects, pursued the following questions:
The German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) is a study carried out by the LIfBi. It is an interdisciplinary and multilocational network of excellence consisting of research institutes, research groups, and individual scientists. To find out more about the acquisition of education and its effects on individual life courses and to describe and analyze key educational processes and trajectories over the entire life span, this longitudinal study examines educational processes and competence development from early childhood to late adulthood. Data collected by NEPS are made available free of charge to international scientists aiming to study educational processes. Over the mid- and long-term, the design of NEPS will make an important contribution towards answering the following key questions:
PISA Plus was a longitudinal national add-on study to the PISA 2012 survey in which the performance of the same students was tested who had been tested one year before. The study used PISA-tasks as well as tasks of the competence-test for education standards.
The study aimed to show perceptions on the influencing factors of students’ competence development and to motivate developing and validating methods for data evaluation (control sampling, scaling of performance data).
The research focused on the following question:
The project aimed to prepare a concept for the description of non-monetary return on education for the education report of the federal government on the basis of theoretical and empirical approaches. The subproject „Personality and education effects“ examined to what extent education variables predict personality changes in childhood and adolescence and whether these effects are independent of the students’ cognitive competences or whether the cognitive competences have an effect on personality beyond the influence of education. Furthermore the subproject investigated whether adults’ level of competence and (previous) participation in education determines personality pattern and changes. Additionally, interaction effects of personality and competences on outcome variables (e.g. life satisfaction) were examined. The central data sources are the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and especially the additional national longitudinal study PIAAC-L.
Students who were in grade 9 in 2010 were interviewed since then on a regular basis within the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). After the first funding period, the NEPS-consortium excluded former students of special schools from the main sample in December 2013. Therefore, there was a need for external funding to continue with the “special school sample”.
There is a lack of data on educational trajectories and transitions of former students who graduated from special schools. However, NEPS data allowed an analysis of transitions from general school systems to either a transition or a vocational training system (after grade nine or ten). Nevertheless, it is not known if those transitions succeed or fail.
It was expected to get profound insights into educational trajectories of former students of special schools. The dataset can be used as a German-wide reference data set to contextualize process-based data collected by the Federal Employment Agency.
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 since 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 and questionnaires on personal characteristics, schools 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 Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN), 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 IPN. Since then, the documentation of the studies has been revised and completed. The rescaling of achievement data were 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.