Students' Civic Knowledge Achievement - a Cross-National Comparative Analysis

Können internationale Unterschiede im Niveau politischer Bildung durch bildungssystemische Bedingungen erklärt werden? Daten der International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016 zeigen, dass sich OECD Länder deutlich hinsichtlich des politischen Wissenserwerbs von Schüler:innen unterscheiden. Auch die soziale Ungleichheit politischer Bildung hängt teils stark vom jeweiligen nationalen Kontext ab. In dieser Studie werden anhand von Mehrebenenanalysen, bildungssystemische Bedingungen identifiziert, die einen Zusammenhang mit dem politischen Wissenserwerb von Schüler:innen aufweisen. Die Ergebnisse weisen darauf hin, dass hohe Anforderungen an die Lehrkräfteausbildung, fächerübergreifende politische Bildung anstatt der Isolation im Politikunterricht und eine Kultur der politischen Diskussion im Klassenzimmer positiv mit dem politischen Wissenserwerb von Schüler:innen assoziiert sind, während ein nach Leistung gegliedertes Sekundarschulwesen negativ mit dem politischen Wissenserwerb zusammenhängt. Darüber hinaus haben manche bildungssystemische Bedingungen unterschiedliche Einflüsse auf Schüler:innen unterschiedlicher sozialer Herkunft und haben somit das Potenzial soziale Ungleichheit zu reduzieren oder gar zu verstärken. Die Ergebnisse liefern der Bildungspolitik Anhaltspunkte für Rahmenbedingungen, die politische Bildung effektiver und für alle Schüler:innen zugänglicher gestalten können.Can education system conditions explain cross-national differences in civic knowledge achievement? Data of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 20161 show that OECD countries significantly differ in their overall levels of civic knowledge as well as in their social inequities of civic knowledge among students. This study applies multi-level analyses to identify education system conditions that are associated with students' civic knowledge. The results show a post-graduate degree for teachers, horizontal curriculum integration of civic issues, and a macro-societal culture of classroom debate being positively associated with students' levels of civic knowledge, while tracking by performance is negatively associated with civic knowledge achievement. Moreover, some education system conditions have varying impacts on students depending on their social backgrounds and therefore can potentially reduce or reinforce the inequities of civic learning. The results can inform policymakers about potential means to make civic education more effective and accessible for all students

Deregulation of education: What does it mean for efficiency and equality?

This article analyses from a cross-national comparative perspective how deregulation of compulsory education affects two central educational outcomes: efficiency and equality. The conflict between public regulation on the one hand and the market model on the other hand describes one of the most fundamental political struggles. In several fields of societal life, such as compulsory education, the state traditionally holds a strong monopoly in almost all capitalist societies. However, using three waves of PISA school level data we show that the degree of public regulation varies cross-nationally. The central finding of our analyses is that deregulation of education increases educational achievement of individual students across all social classes and thereby fosters the educational efficiency of the national education systems. Nevertheless, it also becomes evident that higher social classes benefit more strongly from deregulation, which increases the degree of educational inequality. These results indeed confirm that deregulation of education provokes an efficiency-versus-equality trade-off in national education systems. -- Der Konflikt zwischen einer staatlichen Regulation schulischer Bildung auf der einen Seite und einem deregulierten Marktmodell auf der anderen Seite stellt eine der fundamentalsten politischen Auseinandersetzungen der letzten Jahrzehnte dar. Traditionellerweise hält der Staat das Monopol der Bildungsorganisation, doch seit einigen Jahren haben verschiedene Länder verstärkt auf eine Privatisierung und Flexibilisierung schulischer Bildung gesetzt. Allerdings variiert der Grad der Standardisierung bzw. Deregulierung über verschiedene nationale Bildungssysteme deutlich. Der Beitrag untersucht mithilfe eines internationalen Vergleichs wie sich eine Deregulierung des schulischen Sektors auf die zentralen bildungspolitischen Outcomes Effizienz (bzw. Leistung) und Chancengleichheit auswirkt. Mit Daten aus drei Wellen der OECD PISA-Studie zeigen wir, dass sich eine Deregulierung des schulischen Sektors positiv auf die Leistungen aller Schüler auswirkt und somit die Effizienz von Bildungssystemen steigert. Allerdings wird auch deutlich, dass höhere soziale Schichten stärker von einer Deregulierung profitieren. Damit bestätigt sich die Annahme, dass die Deregulierung schulischer Bildung zu einem Trade-off zwischen Effizienz und Gleichheit führt.

Erfolgsbedingungen und Herausforderungen für die Zusammenarbeit von Fachpraxis und Wissenschaft bei der Evaluation von Angeboten politischer Bildung

Politische Bildung trägt zur Prävention von politischem, religiösem bzw. ideologischem Extremismus und seinen Folgen bei. Die Qualitätssicherung in der Extremismusprävention beinhaltet daher auch die Evaluation politischer Bildung. Am Beispiel der Angebote politischer Bildung des Vereins ufuq.de (anerkannter Träger der freien Jugendhilfe) beschreibt dieser Report des Projekts PrEval, wie eine Zusammenarbeit von Fachpraxis und Wissenschaft bei der Entwicklung von Evaluationsdesigns gestaltet werden kann. Der Report reflektiert, welche Chancen und Herausforderungen sich im Zuge der Zusammenarbeit zeigten und welche Implikationen sich daraus für weitere Evaluationsvorhaben ergeben

Educational Federalism in Germany: Foundations of Social Inequality in Education

This article applies Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to examine how sub-national education systems affect the extent of social inequality in education within the German federal states. Variations in educational outcomes between the federal states can be primarily attributed to the strict educational decentralization in Germany. We examine four conditions of regional education systems presumed to be relevant for the extent of social inequality in education: the availability of early childhood education, the development of all-day schools, the onset of tracking to different school types, and the degree of tripartition in secondary education. Altogether, we find systematic relationships between the variation of sub-national education systems and the extent of social inequality in education. The results indicate that well-developed early childhood education is necessary for a low degree of educational inequality. However, educational inequality is not directly related to partisan and socioeconomic determinants

Logics of Educational Stratification: A Cross-National Map of Educational Inequality

Equality of education is often seen as the fundament of the overall equality of opportunity in modern societies. However, no reliable and comprehensive cross-national comparison of educational inequality hitherto exists. The aim of the present paper is to provide a cross-national comparative outline of diverse dimensions of educational inequality in the OECD world. We estimate the effects of three highly influential aspects of socioeconomic background on educational achievement in each OECD country in order to create a ranking of educational inequality in 30 capitalist countries. The central finding is that we indeed cannot identify a single cross-national ranking but three dimensions of education inequality: educational inequality based on economic, educational, and migration background at home. Capitalist economies thus do not only differ with regard to the degree of inequality but, first and foremost concerning the predominant patterns of inequality and the main distributive keys.</jats:p

Partisan power, economic coordination and variations in vocational training systems in Europe

This article explores the variation of vocational education and training systems in European countries. From a survey of experts in 15 European countries, we develop a typology along two dimensions: employer involvement and public commitment. In a second step, we explain the variety of skill formation systems, highlighting the importance of partisan power and economic coordination. The causal argument is applied in three illustrative case studies of Germany, Sweden and the UK. In particular, we argue that a high degree of economic coordination increases the relevance of training relative to academic education. However, differences within the cluster of coordinated market economies are related to different legacies of partisan power in the post-war decades

An attitude network analysis of post-national citizenship identities.

How are evaluative reactions pertaining post-national citizenship identities interrelated and what are the potential mechanisms how post-national identities evolve? Previous efforts to operationalize and measure post-national citizenship identities leave it open how people's stances on different issues are related and suffer from a variety of theoretical and methodological shortcomings regarding the nature of political attitudes and ideologies. A recently proposed approach conceptualizes ideologies as networks of causally connected evaluative reactions to individual issues. Individual evaluative reactions form the nodes in a network model, and these nodes can influence each other via linked edges, thereby giving rise to a dynamic thoughts system of networked political and identity-related views. To examine this system at large, we apply network analysis to data from the European Values Study. Specifically, we investigate 33 evaluative reactions regarding national and supra-national identity, diversity, global empathy, global environmentalism, immigration, and supra-national politics. The results reveal a strongly connected network of citizenship identity-related attitudes. A community analysis reveals larger clusters of strongly related evaluative reactions, which are connected via bridges and hub nodes. Centrality analysis identifies evaluative reactions that are strategically positioned in the network, and network simulations indicate that persuasion attempts targeted at such nodes have greater potential to influence the larger citizenship identity than changes of more peripheral attitude nodes. We lastly show that socio-demographic characteristics are not only associated with the overall level of post-national citizenship, but also with the network structure, suggesting that these structural differences can affect the network function as people develop national or post-national citizenship identities, or respond to external events. These results provide new insights into the structure of post-national identities and the mechanism how post-national identities might evolve. We end with a discussion of future opportunities to study networked attitudes in the context of civic and citizenship education

Educational inequality in the EU : the effectiveness of the national education policy

Since the publication of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), scholarly interest in analysing the effectiveness and performance of education policy has risen again. The present article follows this path and presents the first empirical evaluation of the influence of national education policies on educational inequality in the European Union member states. We examine whether the availability of preschool education, an all-day school tradition, tracking during secondary education, a large private school sector, average class size and education expenditures moderate the relationship between individual social background and educational success. As a main finding, our multi-level analyses show that education policy affects educational inequality very differently, an outcome that is most visible when comparing West European and post-communist countries

Multimethodische Evaluationsdesigns: eine Erhebung der sozialwissenschaftlichen Praxis

Bei der Evaluation von sozialen Programmen, wie etwa im Bereich der Extremismus­prävention, kann es förderlich sein, mehrere Forschungs­methoden (Multimethodik) und Akteurs­perspektiven (Multi­perspektivität) einzubeziehen, um dem Evaluations­gegenstand gerecht zu werden. In der Umsetzung können multi­methodische Evaluationen jedoch unterschiedlich aussehen. Der vorliegende Report beschreibt auf Basis einer umfangreichen Analyse publizierter Evaluationen, wie Multi­methodik und Multi­perspektivität in der Breite der sozial­wissenschaftlichen Evaluations­forschung umgesetzt werden. Der Report vergleicht die Umsetzung von Multimethodik und Multi­perspektivität über verschiedene Disziplinen wie Bildung, Gesundheit, Politik, Kommunikation und Justiz hinweg und bietet damit eine Orientierungs­hilfe für ein entsprechendes Vorgehen bei der Evaluation in der Extremismus­prävention