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.
The aim of the project “The Power of Reading – Elementary Schools” are
- early recognition of children with difficulties in acquiring written language
- deriving individual support based on diagnostic findings
- documentation of learning development for working with parents and defining an educational plan with specialists
- prevention of reading and spelling difficulties
For this purpose, the MI, together with the IPN and the Institute for Quality Development in Schools in Schleswig-Holstein (IQSH) in cooperation with the Cornelsen-Publishing House, is developing a two-part work material combined in a student- and teacher-booklet for diagnosing and supporting of reading and writing skills in elementary schools. The participating teachers are prepared for the implementation of the individual milestones in regular regional training events, the derived support measures are discussed and experiences are exchanged.
Starting in the 2018/19 school year, “Lesen macht stark” launched in first grade with a training concept that complements the diagnostic material. The Mercator Institute is providing scientific advice on the development of the materials for the remedial training and is accompanying its introduction in the schools by researching the implementation conditions. It investigates the conditions under which teachers accept the training program and whether they use the material in accordance with the concept.
The federal state of Berlin initiated an evaluation of the Federal European School in Berlin (SESB). As part of the EUROPE study, from 2014 to 2017, the linguistic, subject-related and intercultural competence of SESB pupils were compared to those of conventionally taught pupils.
Furthermore, the study seeked to review the implementation of the SESB concept regarding the composition of the student body and the use of teachers, accompanied by a survey of parents.
A particular advantage of the EUROPE study was the assessment of competence in the non-German languages based on tests of the international student assessments TIMSS, PIRLS and PISA. This approach made it possible to compare the performances of the SESB pupils with those pupils from countries where these languages are actually spoken.
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.
The study „Tradition and Innovation. Development at High Schools in Baden-Württemberg and Sachsen“ (TRAIN) seeked to help answering questions about the „effects“ of learning environments. TRAIN was a multicohort longitudinal study which examined the development of academic success, motivation, ability to perform and well-being during upper second track education and to what extent they are influenced by varying learning environments.
The TRAIN study addressed questions such as:
- Which academic, family, and individual premises are most beneficial for students’ learning?
- How do different school forms handle their students’ strengths and weaknesses?
- How well-prepared for their entry into the job market are students when they graduate?
- How can teaching be successful despite difficult circumstances?
The Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) is the supra-regional scientific research support organization for psychology in German-speaking countries. It supports the entire scientific work process from gathering ideas and researching literature to documenting research, archiving data and publishing the results, based on an ideal-type research cycle.
It 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 basic application research in the area of research literacy and user-friendly research support. Further expansions of the research area are in progress around the topics of research syntheses in psychology and big data in psychology.
The central, free-of-charge services include the search portal PubPsych, the open access publishing platform PsychOpen and the psychology repository PsychArchives. New services for study planning, preregistration of psychological studies, data collection and data analysis are under development.
Important projects:
- In its reference database PSYNDEX (accessible, e.g., via the search portal PubPsych), 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 (accessible via the search portal PubPsych) 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. An open access archive of psychological tests (“Elektronisches Testarchiv“) offers a number of assessment tools for research purposes.
- PsychData – Research Data for Psychology
With PsychData, the ZPID has developed a data-sharing platform specialized for psychology research. - In its research focus „Research Literacy and User-Friendly Research Support“, ZPID investigates information behavior in formal as well as informal learning contexts and develops interventions aimed at fostering information literacy.
- ZPID is involved in research monitoring educational research in Germany.
- ZPID conducts scientometric analyses to monitor the internationalization of educational research and Educational Psychology in German-speaking countries (ZPID Monitor).
The associated partner “Centre for International Student Assessment (ZIB) e.V.” at the TUM School of Education at Technical University of Munich conducts educational research in large scale assessments together with two Leibniz associated partners: DIPF – Leibniz Insitute für Research and Information in Education and Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education at Kiel University (IPN). ZIB is particularly in charge of the national coordination and implementation of PISA as well as developing and enhancing PISA with innovative methods, research questions, and instruments. ZIB is an affiliated institute of the Technical University of Munich and funded by the German federation and the federal states.
Important Work and Services:
- ZIB is responsible for the national coordination and implementation
of PISA and is furthermore involved in its international development.
- Research at ZIB focuses significantly on three fields: Educational
Monitoring, School and Teaching Research, Methodology Research.
- ZIB supports young researchers in international student assessments
especially with method workshops and junior researcher academies.
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.
The Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) in Bamberg analyses educational processes from birth to old age. In order to promote longitudinal educational research in Germany, the LIfBi provides fundamental, nationally and internationally significant, research-based infrastructures for empirical educational research. One core of the institute is the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), which is based at the LIfBi and brings together the expertise of a Germany-wide, interdisciplinary network of excellence. In addition to the ReGES and BildungswegeFlucht refugee studies, the LIfBi is also in charge of other major projects such as the Data Literacy monitoring study. This is based on their own research and development work, in particular the well-founded development of instruments and methods for longitudinal educational studies, from which other research projects also benefit.
Important work and services:
- LIfBi runs the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). The NEPS collects longitudinal data that are representative of Germany on the development of competencies, educational processes, educational decisions, and returns to education in formal, nonformal, and informal contexts throughout the whole life span.
- NEPS data are made available to the national and international scientific community in the form of Scientific Use Files that can be accessed through various innovative ways using state-of-the-art technology. Interested data users are invited to attend regular user trainings.
- NEPS data provide an empirical basis for research and offer a rich potential for analysis with regard to educational research and related disciplines (e.g., demography, educational science, economics, psychology, and sociology).
- In addition to the standard documentation material for every single Scientific Use File, the NEPS Research Data Center offers a number of supplemental information and assisting tools for handling the NEPS data.
- The Research Data Center LIfBi (RDC LIfBi) is primarily responsible for the user-friendly preparation of survey and test data of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and its dissemination to the scientific community in the form of Scientific Use Files.
- Third-party funded projects by LIfBi: LIfBi continually acquires new third-party funded projects.
The Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN) was established in 1966 as a research center for science education. As an institute of the Leibniz Association, the IPN has a nationwide function. It is also affiliated to the University of Kiel. The department heads at the IPN hold professorships at the University of Kiel.
The institute’s mission is to advance science and mathematics education through its research. Therefore, research deals with the full range of issues concerning teaching and learning in the sciences and in mathematics inside and outside schools. The institute comprises six departments: Educational Research, Educational Assessment and Measurement, Biology Education, Chemistry Education, Mathematics Education, and Physics Education. Approximately 170 people make up the IPN staff; about 130 work as researchers, including 60 doctoral students. About 50% of the staff work on projects funded by different research foundations or clients.
The IPN’s work ranges across the entire field of science, mathematics, and technology education. The IPN concentrates on long-term and nationwide research projects, which cannot be covered by universities.
The IPN research program focuses on following areas:
- Aims and models of mathematics and science education
- Prerequisites for teaching and learning mathematics and science
- Implementation and Evaluation of Concepts for Subject-Specific Teaching and Learning Processes in Mathematics and Science
- Promotion of Mathematics and Science through Competitions and Supplementary Learning Opportunities
- Educational Assessment and Measurement
Besides its research activities, the IPN offers different transfer activities: Coordination of national and international student competitions in biology, chemistry, physics and environmental issues, programs for teacher education, and publications on science and mathematics education addressing teachers and scientists.
