Contribution
Description: The German Educational System currently is in a state of change - from an input-oriented to an output-oriented control system: educational standards, basic teaching curricula and pivotal standardized performance measures shall help to improve students' learning. The strengthening of the autonomy of single schools in order to become 'separate pedagogical operation entities' (Fend 1986) and the feedback concerning the results of data-driven tests shall put teachers and schools in the position to enhance the quality of lessons' and school's development. In the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia this control system is realised in standardized comparative tests - so-called 'Vergleichsarbeit Lernstand 9' - which test the level of learning of all students in the ninth degree in the subjects Mathematics, German and English as a foreign language.
The education policy in Germany and especially in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia is one starting point to explore the internal reactions, impacts and implementations in schools by teachers in respect to the standardized testing of students' learning. The purpose of these pivotal standardized performance measures is the improvement of lessons' quality and school's development. In schools, these demands require specific internal chains of communication and different capacities of processing reflected data. The study starts out from the subsequent processes of these data-driven standardized tests concerning the students' competence. Here, the mechanisms and processes of the teachers' reception of the data are investigated. In this project those subsequent processes are examined in regard to school's and lessons' development as well as the professionalizing of teachers. From this, the following questions can be concluded: How do teachers and schools react on the data offer? and Which forms of data-processing exist in schools?
A theoretical framework of two key-concepts, namely 'professionalism' (Parsons/Rueschemeyer) and 'decision' (Luhmann), forms the basis of this study. The thematic field is structured via a combination of structural-theoretical approaches and is related to the decision-patterns in German schools. This construct is based on the assumption, that there is a fundamental difference between scientific and performing knowledge. Therefore, the relation between the teachers' perception of their professionalism and their actual habitual expression is especially focused in respect to the reflection of the school's exam-data. Concerning the handling of the empirical material, the habitus-model (Bourdieu) is applied as well as the decision and professionalism theories in order to analyse capacity, opportunities and risks of teacher's work by output-oriented control.
Methodology: The empirical data-base is supported by two comparative case studies, which are carried out in two comprehensive schools - so-called 'Gesamtschulen' - and which are enforced parallel to the implementation of the standardized test 'Lernstand 9' in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. This provides an opportunity to examine empirically, how teachers and schools adapt themselves to the changes of output-oriented control on the one hand and, on the other hand, which impact the data-feedback has on executive levels of schools.
Conclusions: The aim of this study is to develop a typology of the teachers' different perceptions of professionalism based on the qualitative material. This theoretical approach suggests that the handling of the data-feedback is closely bound to the teachers' internal structure of knowledge. The precise distinction between the teachers' normative and technical knowledge concerning the use of the empirical data will be of important relevance for the improvement of the pupils' achievements and lessons' quality.
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