Relevance and state of research

The Bologna declaration^[1] has terminated the long tradition of the Diploma degree in many European states, including Germany, and introduced the BA/MA degree. The current state of research provides little empirical evidence on the effects of this structural change and the comprehensive study reform on the development of student professionalism. Systematic analyses have to be conducted with the help of empirical assessment models in order to assess professionalism as a feature depending on the main structures and processes of the university system as well as on individual factors. This does not only apply to Germany, but is of international relevance (e.g., Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia & Kuhn 2011).

Theoretical base and research questions

The project ILLEV is funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research. It focuses on comparing the development of professionalism among future teachers who study Business and Economics Education in the old (Diploma) and new (BA) degree programs. On the basis of professional teacher competence models (Weinert 2001; Shulman 1986) the project focuses on economic competence including control variables like intelligence, motivation and attitude. The change from the Diploma to BA/MA degree program allows for comparisons regarding the professional development.

Professional competence is regarded as an interplay of individual and structural features of the degree courses. The research project aims on modeling and assessing the cognitive dimension of future teachers’ professionalism: the content and didactical knowledge of economics. For the assessment of content knowledge and thinking the WBT (Beck et al. 1998; a German equivalent of the American Test of Economic Literacy (TEL) from Soper and Walstad 1987) and the Business Administration Knowledge Test (BAKT, Bothe et al. 2007) were validated with regard to the curriculum and applied.

[1] In Bologna in 1999 the European ministers for Research and Education decided to modernize and align the university systems of all member states and associated states.

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