With regard to the improvement of school education in Europe, individual learning processes of students are increasingly focused. Internationally similar concepts such as individualized education, individual support of students or adaptive teaching are discussed as a way to encourage students in accordance with their skills and to provide a learning culture at school that is oriented towards the individual (Carlgren, Klette, Mýrdal, Schnack & Simola, 2006; Corno, 2008; Dimenäs, Andresen, Cruickshank, Ojala & Ratzki, 2006). In Germany, the individual support of students in school is required by law in some federal states. In this light, the term “individual support” is applied to describe teachers’ actions aimed at supporting the individual student’s learning and the development of the student’s skills and personality (Kunze, 2016). However, empirical findings show that from an international perspective such concepts are so far not that widespread in schools in Germany (Dimenäs et al., 2006; Lankes & Carstensen, 2007). One reason for this could be that supporting students individually in heterogeneous learning groups is a challenge for teachers (Böttcher, Maykus, Altermann & Liesegang, 2014) as it represents a complex process including a diagnosis of individual learning needs, planning of support, individualization in class, and evaluation (Solzbacher, Behrensen, Sauerhering & Schwer, 2012). In this context, the use of didactic tools and procedures, for example the documentation of students’ individual learning development by the teacher or the use of rubrics for the acquisition of students’ individual competences, are being discussed as tools to support individual learning (Rakhkochkine  & Dhaouadi, 2008; Goodrich Andrade, 2000). Results from international research indicate that the use of such tools contributes to more transparency for the students (Goodrich Andrade, 2000; Jonsson & Svingby, 2007) and supports a more detailed diagnosis of students’ competences on behalf of the teachers (Hanke, Backhaus & Bogatz, 2013). In total, there is still quite a lack of research on the use of tools like a documentation to individually support students at school.

            Against this background, the study envisaged here, focusses on teachers’ use of a prototype of a computer based documentation of students’ development at a secondary school in Germany, characterized by a high heterogeneity among the students (e.g. a large number of students with a migration background, new students from abroad, students with diverging language skills, students with educational needs) that require individualized education. In the documentation, the teachers describe the competences of all their students in the core subjects (math, German, English) of classes 5 to 10 as well as their interdisciplinary competences continuously in a database. This detailed form of record-keeping was developed within the scope of a school development process and is part of a pedagogical school concept that aims at enabling a holistically support for all students at the school as well as possible. It comprises several components to foster their students, e.g. detailed diagnosis, changes of teaching, more adaptive teaching, teachers’ cooperation, and learning guidance (Hornberg, Sonnenburg & Buddeberg, 2016). The study to be presented here examines how far the use of this documentation helps teachers to individually support students referring to the mentioned model (diagnosis, planning of the support, individual support in class, evaluation of the support), with special attention being payed to the question which changes the teachers perceive regarding their pedagogical activities due to the use of the documentation.

Using a qualitative approach, the study investigates the teachers’ task of supporting the students individually from the perspective of teachers at a secondary school in Germany. The design of the study is divided into a pre-study and a main-study. In winter 2014/2015 a written survey of the involved teachers (n=21) by means of open and closed questions was carried out at the school as part of the pre-study. The sample represents the teachers involved in the development and testing of the computer-based record keeping at the secondary school investigated. The written survey was used to prepare the main-study. Subsequently in spring 2015, semi-structured expert interviews were conducted with teachers of that school as part of the main-study. The term “expert” is inspired by Meuser and Nagel (2009). According to them, teachers participating in the development of the instrument are understood as experts due to their experiences with the instrument. The interviews and open questions from the written survey were analyzed using qualitative content analysis, which is a well-known procedure to evaluate qualitative data by being transparent and by following strict rules. According to the standards of the qualitative content analysis a guideline to code the interviews was created (Kuckartz, 2014; Mayring, 2014). Subsequently, in the second step of the analysis, the relevant text passages of the expert interviews were assigned to categories using the software MAXQDA. By doing so, the various text passages of the different interviews were analyzed in a summary. The categories were created in a deductive-inductive way, which means that there were also categories that were created inductively from the interview material.

This paper presents the instrument of the documentation of the students’ learning development and some results about how it can help teachers with the individual support of their students. The teachers describe many changes with regard to their professional development, for example in view of the teachers’ individual perception of each student. For the teachers, the documentation is an occasion to individually diagnose students’ competences and leads to an increased consideration of the criterial reference standard. Furthermore, the documentation helps the teachers with lesson planning as well as with the counseling of students. On the other hand, from the perspective of the teachers, there are still challenges and difficulties that can be identified, for example with regard to the implementation of individualized learning offers in class and in view of the time needed for the detailed diagnosis and documentation of the students’ competences. Furthermore, the digitalization of the documentation serves as assistance for teachers: In this regard, potentials for a further development of the tool in the future can be shown (e.g. development of utilization possibilities for students, connection with adaptive test procedures, learning management systems). Finally, this paper will link the findings to research from the Scandinavian countries (Carlgren et al., 2006; Dimenäs et al., 2006) that are known for a individual learning culture at school. This paper aims at discussing the implications of these findings in view of an international perspective, as the tool presented here and the school development process it is embedded in present one way to reduce disadvantages in school systems in Europe.

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