How do teachers develop into experts in teaching? How well do studies and preparatory service prepare them for the profession? These central questions of teacher (education) research were investigated in the COACTIV-expeRt project funded by the German Research Foundation. The aim was to investigate the long-term development of teachers’ professional competence and to identify resources for positive development as well as risk factors for unfavourable development. In addition, it was analysed how sustainable the professional competence acquired during studies and preparatory service predicts later success in the teaching profession. The data basis was the COACTIV teacher traineeship study, in which more than 800 teacher candidates were surveyed from 2007 to 2009 during their pre-service training on central aspects of professional competence, on characteristics of their personality and on the learning opportunities in the pre-service training. In several sub-studies, the aspects of professional competence and various indicators of professional success among these participants, who now have an average of 10 years of professional experience were investigated.
This study aims to investigate the long-term professionalisation of teachers and the development of their professional competence. In addition, the study examines indicators of professional success and attempts to identify resources for positive professional development as well as risk factors for rather unfavourable development of teachers.
The project pursues the following research questions:
- What transfer strategies do the individual projects in the funding line ‘Language Education in the Immigration Society: Developing Individual Potential and Shaping Transitions’ pursue?
- How can the individual projects be systematically located within a common body of research on language education?
- To what extent is the phenomenon of multilingualism taken into account in research?
- How can research findings be successfully transferred into educational practice?
- What role does the evaluation of evidence, relevance and usefulness by practitioners play in the successful transfer of knowledge when implementing empirically proven concepts?
The aim of the meta-project ‘Language Education in the Immigration Society’ is to place the research questions, strategies and findings of the funded individual projects and their contributions to the further development of educational practice in a larger scientific and social context. To this end, the meta-project accompanies the individual projects and also works on independent research questions. On the one hand, the state of research on language education in the immigration society is systematically communicated to the funded individual projects through research syntheses and expert opinions and introduced into the scientific discourse. On the other hand, concepts and findings from transfer and implementation research are used to investigate the personal, organisational and institutional conditions under which the funded projects succeed in putting research knowledge and innovative concepts into practice and thus fulfilling the transfer and implementation promise of language-related educational research.
The meta project also contributes to knowledge and technology transfer through its own transfer and communication activities and by supporting the funded projects.
The core of the project is a large panel survey, the ‘Corona und Du’ (CoDu) study. This investigates the educational attainment of socially disadvantaged children and young people and ways of coping with the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to regular surveys of children of different age groups and their parents, two randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are being used to investigate a) how the provision of free e-book readers for children affects their reading behaviour and reading performance and b) whether online tutoring for young people from SGB II families is a suitable instrument to compensate for possible inequalities in the Covid-19-related educational gaps.
The joint project Domain Data Protocols for Empirical Educational Research in Germany (DDP-Education) is concerned with the development of standardised data protocols to ensure data quality and the subsequent use of research data. The aim is to create publicly accessible and referenceable model protocols for research data management in empirical educational research. Domain data protocols describe all relevant aspects of research data management with regard to data quality, preparation and documentation as well as the handling of legal requirements – in concrete terms and in relation to the specific data type or the specific data collection method. The sample protocols support researchers in generating quality-assured and reusable research data that fulfils current requirements in terms of reproducibility, FAIRness and open science. In addition, the model protocols help to make the process of applying for funding and the associated review and monitoring processes more efficient.
The meta-project (Digi-EBF II) is part of the Empirical Educational Research framework programme and the BMBF research focus ‘Digitalisation in Education’. It pursues the overarching goals of advancing research on education and digitalisation, making it visible and shaping it in collaboration with practitioners.
Coordinated by the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), the project brings together the UDE, DIPF, DIE and IWM. The network sees itself as a service provider for the projects funded by the research centre, whose services are based on research findings that have already been obtained (Digi-EBF I) and are currently being collected (Digi-EBF II).
In Digi-EBF II, measures and practices of co-construction are identified, programmes are created to enable and shape transfer and own research is conducted to develop the challenges and potentials of co-construction and transfer in education. In the sense of design-oriented educational research, approaches to cooperation with the funded projects are reflected upon and discussed in reflection meetings and dialogue formats with educational practice and bridging actors and introduced into a broader discourse. The meta-project networks the funded projects with each other and within the research community on content-related, methodological and transfer-related topics. The state of research on practice-relevant issues relating to education and digitalisation is compiled in research syntheses, prepared in a practice-oriented manner and disseminated via appropriate channels. Accompanying these activities, various formats of knowledge transfer (dialogue formats, knowledge products and online portals) are researched and used.
The project investigates how the fundamental possibilities of digital learning contexts can be realised in a real school context.
AI-based adaptive, interactive systems enable a genuine improvement in learning through customised support. However, there has been little discussion to date about how individualised digital support can be meaningfully integrated into school lessons.
The project offers both the necessary technical expansion and systematic further training on digitally supported teaching and learning in English. As part of the project, the school-proven, AI-based tutor system Feedbook will be expanded to include an interface for teachers. This is intended to process the diverse information on the learning processes and individual competences of the pupils in a class in such a way that teachers receive the information they need to design lessons in a way that promotes learning in a short space of time.
Further training for teachers supports both the concrete use of such an interface in school practice and the learning psychology and methodological-didactic principles required for independent interpretation.
The secondary analytical project “Effects of the Corona Pandemic on Adult Learning” investigates how the pandemic and the numerous changes it brought about have affected participation in various forms of adult education and training (AET), which learning barriers and opportunities the crisis has brought, and how patterns of social inequality in AET have changed as a result. As AET will be a key component in mitigating pandemic-induced disruptions in the labor market, a prompt response to these questions is important to derive targeted educational strategies. The project is funded within the focus funding program “Education and Corona: Effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic on Educational Processes across the Lifespan” by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The focus funding program enables the addressing of particularly pressing scientific questions. It aims to analyze pandemic-induced influences on people’s educational pathways and consider the long-term implications for societal developments (e.g., social inequality). The funded one-year evaluation projects therefore focus on longitudinal studies.
The aim of the project was to examine the returns to formal educational careers and general basic cognitive skills in three dimensions that are of great importance in adulthood, both for the individuals themselves and for their social environment, and are additionally highly correlated:
- subjective well-being
- social capital
- social and political participation
Beside the returns to education, the correlation between education and personality in childhood and adult age will be investigated
One finding of the study was that a high level of education favors both volunteerism and high social trust, although this relationship is relatively weak and mainly indirect.
Higher educated people are likely to volunteer or show high social trust mainly because they have good literacy skills, favorable personality traits in this regard, and other valuable resources. This showed that competencies and basic cognitive skills are more important prerequisites for social and political participation than educational qualifications.
The goal of the DiFA project is to combine methodological perspectives from the fields of psychometrics and learning analytics to support learners through automated feedback. Using digital trace data in online courses, DiFA will develop new forms of non-invasive measurement (so-called “stealth assessment”) and explore the possibilities of automated feedback that supports learning. The research results are significant for a better understanding of learning behavior and outcomes, as well as for the automated provision of individualized feedback to learners in digital environments.
Data will be collected from a specially developed online course for student teachers on digital literacy. Based on the data obtained from the course, automated learning support feedback will be developed in the pilot phase of the research project. The evaluation phase will then examine whether the feedback has a positive effect on students’ learning progress.
In the previous project MultiTEX, a computer-based test was developed to assess students’ competence in understanding multiple documents (Multiple Document Comprehension, MDC).
In the MultiTEX Transfer project, the test will be made available to students of the humanities and social sciences in the introductory phase of their studies. The research question is which conditions have to be fulfilled in order to support a sustainable use of the MDC ability of students in the course of the first semester.
In a two-stage approach, the MDC test is first provided with accompanying introductory courses so that students can check their own MDC skills and identify and work on any deficits.
Researchers then identify conditions for the optimal use of the MDC test as a diagnostic, feedback, and support tool.
Finally, they develop a concept for the sustainable use of the test for students, teachers and student advisors.
