Learner Development, Developmental Tasks, and Educational Experience of Students in German Schools

Author(s):

Claus Bolte(presenting / submitting)Meinert Meyer

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

27. Didactics - Learning and Teaching

Format:

Paper

Session Information

27 SES 01 A, The Learner Developement : Pedagogical and / or Didactical Approaches

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-02

13:15-14:45

Room:

B015 Anfiteatro

Chair:

Jonas Almqvist

Contribution

1 Objectives

PISA has changed a lot in Germany, in education, as well as in educational research. The proponents of large scale assessment foster the establishment of educational standards and a nation-wide competitive evaluation of student performance. Their work stands in marked contrast to an increasing number of educational researchers who object standardization and fight for educational differentiation and equality of opportunity for heterogeneous student populations, teachers and schools. In our paper, we show how to combine the two approaches. The program we focus on is called “research on learner development and educational experience”, in German: “Bildungsgangforschung” (Trautmann 2004, Meyer 2008, Bertels & Bolte 2010). To be more specific: Bildungsgang researchdeals with a variety of topics:

Analysis of learner development in relation to teaching and learning,
Investigation of how students’ and teachers’ biographical background influences their schooling,
Re-construction of how students and teachers negotiate meaning.

2 Theoretical Framework

Following the American educationist Havighurst, we consider children’s and adolescents’ developmental tasks a central concept of Bildungsgang research (Trautmann 2004). Dependent on that, we try to find out what makes sense for students when they experience education. Sense construction, therefore, is another important concept (Meyer 2007).

Our first central research topic then is the concept of “developmental tasks” as first formulated by Havighurst; he writes: „A developmental task is midway between an individual need and a societal demand. It assumes an active learner interacting with an active social environment. […] It is a task which arises at or about a certain period in the life of the individual, successful achievement of which leads to his happiness and to success with later tasks, while failure leads to unhappiness in the individual, disapproval in the society, and difficulty with later tasks” (Havighurst 1972, p. vi). Dreher and Dreher (1985) picked up on the work of Havighurst and did some more specific research focusing on the tasks of adolescents. Based on their work, and the work of Hericks and Spörlein (2001), Schenk (2005) formulated six developmental tasks which should be dealt with in classroom instruction. Students aged around 12 to 18 need …

to know who they are and who they want to be (this task is called “self”),
to build up their own moral values (“value”),
to know what job they want to have and what they have to do for this (“vocation”),
to understand how things in their daily lives work (“concepts”),
to understand and accept their own bodies (“body”) and
to know what kind of gender-specific and/or ethnic-specific role they have or would like to have (“role”).

The students’ educational career gets its objective shape by the institutions and organizational measures, which accompany them with their demands from first grade to graduation. But it is the subjects themselves with their self-regulatory power who realize the societal demands in their subjective vein.

If we were asked for analogous trends in the United States, we would refer to a recent publication of Hargreaves and Shirley (2009). We do not agree in all details, but we appreciate the mood and the emotions expressed. Change has to come; and what we aim at cannot be a state-steered production of standardized equality.

Method

3 Modes of Inquiry and data sources 3.1 Student assessment of developmental tasks and other relevant variables of their educational experience – a quantitative approach Apprenticeships in the sciences seem to be uninviting for young people. How can this be explained? To find answers to this question, we developed a questionnaire and offered it to students (who are not willing to start a science-related apprenticeship) and to trainees (who have already chosen a job in chemical industry). Thus we had the opportunity to analyze differences between the students’ and trainees’ answers regarding the variables of our research interest using the following model: Fig. 1: Model of relevant variables of student educational experience which might influence their science related career choice (Bertels & Bolte, 2010) The questionnaires we used combines different scales, some of which could be adapted from other studies (table 1). They were administered to 392 students and 102 chemistry trainees. Table 1: Variables/scales and sub-scales of student educational experience 3.2 Developmental tasks and sense construction – a qualitative approach Developmental tasks are different from school subjects. But they are the driving force for learning. That is why constructing sense in teacher-student interaction is of great importance in Bildungsgang research (Koller 2008). Sense is constructed by teachers and learners, but, as a rule, the constructions are not identical. Teachers may be oriented towards the demands of the curriculum. Students want to see instruction in harmony with their future bound orientation. Therefore, negotiation of meaning is of central importance in our program. In order to analyze sense constructions as produced by teachers and students, we used a number of qualitative methods which can best be related to the documentary method developed by Bohnsack (2003). We have observed and videotaped classroom instruction in three subjects, History, English, and Physics; and we interviewed teachers and students before and after instruction. We picked out a sequence that was informative concerning student participation, and presented it to both teachers and students (Meyer, Kunze, Trautmann 2007).

Expected Outcomes

Our analysis allows us to formulate criteria for good lesson planning and instruction. • Chemistry lessons do not meet the needs of students in lower secondary schools. Students experience it as only little motivating and as not sufficiently supportive esp. when dealing with developmental tasks. Negatively attributed prototypes of people in scientific jobs are apparently not discussed in the lessons or changed to more reflective or even positive ones. In our opinion, in chemistry lessons more attention should be paid to the developmental tasks of students. This will foster the relevance of the topics taught in the students eyes, increase their motivation to learn science and improve the students’ educational experience. • The students involved in our inverstigation want their teacher to improve his lesson planning, his classroom management, and his professional behavior in general. We call such sequences authentic learning situations and evaluate them as examples of good student participation. • Students and teachers bring in their biographical background, i.e. their experiences, their pre-dispositions concerning teaching and learning, and their stereotyped awareness-reductions. This should lead to feedback in both directions. • Students are self-regulating subjects and objects of the teachers’ endeavors. The same holds for the teachers. They are self-regulating subjects leading their classes, and at the same time, they are the objects of the students who may cooperate or refuse it. Classroom interaction, by that, gets a dialectical structure giving responsibility to teachers and students. • Teachers should take much more note of students’ didactic competence than it is the case at present-day German schools. The students’ capability of profound didactic analysis, as is revealed in our analysis can be integrated into classroom practice. • Students and teachers struggle with their developmental tasks. That is why teachers and students should cooperate achieving their developmental tasks.

References

Bertels, N., & C. Bolte (2010). Occupational Orientation – A Foreign Concept to Chemistry Lessons. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the National Association for the Research on Science Education (NARST), Philadelphia, USA, March 2010. Bohnsack, R. (2003). Rekonstruktive Sozialforschung. Einführung in qualitative Methoden. Leske & Budrich, Opladen. 5th edition. Bolte, C. (2006). Evaluating Science Instruction by Using the Motivational Learning Environment Questionnaire. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), San Francisco, USA, April 2006. Bolte, C. (2001). How to Enhance Students´ Motivation and Ability to Communicate in Science Class-Discourse. In Behrendt, H., H. Dahncke, R. Duit, W. Gräber, M. Komorek, A. Kross, & P. Reiska (Eds.). Research in Science Education - Past, Present, and Future. London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 277-282. Dreher, E. & M. Dreher (1985). Wahrnehmung und Bewältigung von Entwicklungsaufgaben im Jugendalter. In Oerter, R. (Ed.). Lebensbewältigung im Jugendalter. Weinheim. Hargreaves, A., & D. Shirley (2009). The Fourth Way: The inspiring future for educational change. Blackwell. Havighurst, R.J. (1972). Developmental Tasks and Education. Longman, New York. 3rd edition. Hericks, U., & E. Spoerlein (2001). Entwicklungsaufgaben in Fachunterricht und Lehrerbildung. – Eine Auseinandersetzung mit einem Zentralbegriff der Bildungsgangdidaktik. In U. Hericks, J. Keuffer, H.Ch. Kraeft, & I. Kunze (Eds). Bildungsgangdidaktik. Perspektiven für Fachunterricht und Lehrerbildung. Leske & Budrich, Opladen. Hannover, B., & U. Kessels (2004). Self-to-prototype matching as a strategy for making academic choices. Why high school students do not like math and science. Learning and Instruction 14, 51-67. Kessels, U., & B. Hannover (2002). Die Auswirkungen von Stereotypen über Schulfächer auf die Berufswahlabsichten Jugendlicher. In Spinath, B. & E. Heise (Eds.) Pädagogische Psychologie unter gewandelten gesellschaftlichen Bedingungen. Hamburg. Koller, H.-Ch. (2008, Ed.): Sinnkonstruktion und Bildungsgang. Zur Bedeutung individueller Sinnzuchreibungen im Kontext schulischer Lehr-Lern-Prozesse. Verlag Barbara Budrich. Opladen and Farmington Hills. Meyer, M.A. (2007). Didactics, Sense Making, and Educational Experience. In: European Educational Research Journal, Vol. 6, No. 2, 161 – 171. Meyer, M.A. (2008): Unterrichtsplanung aus der Perspektive der Bildungsgangforschung. In: Meyer/Prenzel/Hellekamps, Hrsg.: Perspektiven der Didaktik. Sonderheft 9 der Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 117 – 138. Meyer, M.A., & H. Meyer (2007): Wolfgang Klafki. Eine Didaktik für das 21. Jahrhundert?. Weinheim. Meyer, M.A., I. Kunze, & M. Trautmann (2007, Eds.): Schülerpartizipation im Englischunterricht. Eine empirische Untersuchung in der gymnasialen Oberstufe. Opladen. Schenk, B. (2005; Ed.): Bausteine einer Bildungsgangtheorie. Wiesbaden. Trautmann, M. (2004; Ed.): Entwicklungsaufgaben im Bildungsgang. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden.

Author Information

Claus Bolte (presenting / submitting)

Freie Universitaet Berlin

Chemistry Education

Berlin

Meinert Meyer

Universitaet Hamburg

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