Educational and Pedagogic research

EERQI will build an advanced framework for relevance assessment of research documents in educational research based on formal mechanisms including citation analysis and linking, semantically-based full text analysis and co-occurrence of information items in open access and non-open access repositories, as well as in online journal articles, books, and other freely available scholarly publications. Educational research is chosen as an example of socially- and politically-embedded research fields within the humanities and social sciences. The resulting prototype framework of quality indicators and methods will provide the base toolset for a European information service for the observation and evaluation of educational research publications. The toolset can be applied to other social sciences and humanities fields. Complementary to traditional measurements of scientific quality (citation analysis, journal impact factor), new methods and indicators of quality assessment will be tested (usage assessments, versions available, other statistical methods, as well as by means of advanced, semantics-based detection of linking, correlations and referral contexts). The project will also address the complex role of the diversity of scientific languages in Europe. Different mother tongues are a barrier to the international flow of communication while also being fundamental to expressing complex scientific ideas which are often embedded in a certain cultural back-ground. Thus the project will also address the challenge of effectively dealing with multilingualism and specific “cultural heritage” of research traditions in the European countries. EERQI results will also raise visibility and competitiveness of European researchers and contribute to new policy bases for funding, hiring, and evaluation decisions in European academic and research institutions.

"Coordination of activities is of crucial importance for organisations working with locally distributed units in different countries. Besides bureaucratic controlling, general norm setting or defining selective incentives, the mobility of personnel is an important but cost intensive mechanism of this cross-border coordination. The objective of the current research project is to analyse the patterns of cross-border personnel mobility and possible changes of these patterns as e.g., a possible virtualisation of cross-border coordination and personnel mobility. The analysis will take part by drawing upon a case study design. Profit and Non-Profit Organisations with locations in Germany and Mexico will be compared. The project is carried out by an interdisciplinary and international research consortium. The participants are German and Mexican researchers in the areas of economics, social sciences as well as comparative educational research. Central Research Questions: Which patterns of personnel mobility are observable in German- and Mexican-based Non-Profit compared to Profit Organisations? Which factors do influence the patterns of cross-border personnel mobility as well as virtual forms of cross-border coordination of organisations? In how far do these patterns change over time? Of which significance are virtual forms of cross-border coordination? Methodology: The design and methodology follow a double approach of hypothesis testing and of generating an explanatory model. Influencing factors of patterns of cross border personnel mobility and possible changes of the same will be evaluated on basis of a comparative case study design. Main axes of comparison are cross-border Profit and Non-Profit Organisations, countries of headquarters and of activities, contingent situation of organisations as well as the institutional embedding of local centers. The methods concentrate on ego-centred and organisational network analysis, content analysis of documents and structured interviews."

'This project informs our understanding of how issues related to race and racialization are constructed through the use of language in higher education settings in Europe, using Norway as a case example. Study 1 compares race and racialization in classroom talk (discourse) in 2-4 university courses, both traditional lectures and dialogue-based courses. Study 2 explores personal stories (narratives) of university students, professors and staff from racial minority groups, creating new spaces for often-silenced voices. In a methodologically innovative move, the two studies are placed in ‘conversation,’ to understand how race and racialization discourse and personal narratives can ‘talk’ to each other to reveal the workings of ideology, agency and resistance. Based on previous research, the researcher anticipates race and racialization discourse to be hidden under more explicit talk about immigration, religion and nation. Higher education serves as a ‘laboratory’ for examining these issues. Although race and racialization discourse has been studied in schools and educational policy, there is a gap in higher education research in this area. Universities are important because the ideas developed and propagated in higher education influence the broader social context: university students are democratic participants who go on to take positions of power and academics shape public discourse. Finally, Norway is a strong case example for at least two reasons. First, Norway is one of the last countries in Europe to transition to a ‘multicultural’ state. Second, Norway’s wealth has largely protected the country from the economic hardship that has affected much of Europe, so it provides an opportunity to understand how race and racialization discourse is constructed in relatively low-stress circumstances. The Norwegian case can be used as a comparison to explore how issues of race and racialization are constructed in Europe and relate to minority residents’ personal narratives.'

The education strand of the Action for Inclusion Initiative brought together COMPAS researchers with senior officials responsible for education in six different European cities to consider their responses around parental engagement in schools, particularly for groups at risk of exclusion. This is an important topic, since recent decades have seen unprecedented levels of migration and more population diversity within European cities, provoking new opportunities and challenges for educational institutions in receiving migrant pupils. However, while some immigrant children or children with parents of an immigrant background equal or exceed the performance of those born in the country, others (particularly those from less developed non-European countries) perform worse than those born in the receiving European country (Heath, Rothon and Kilpi 2008) and are overrepresented in figures on early school leaving (see Borgna and Contini 2014). Those lower attaining young people who leave school early are likely to experience poorer longer term integration outcomes and fewer opportunities for post-compulsory education or employment (see Eurostat 2016, evidence on education). Overcoming these difficulties is particularly pressing in urban areas and particularly for large European cities, where some immigrant-origin children form the majority of students (e.g. see Crul and Doomernik 2003). Within the wider educational research literature, it is recognised that home-school cooperation has an important role to play in improving attainment, with families recognized as having great influence on student attendance and engagement (Epstein and Sheldon 2002). As such, engaging migrant parents is a policy priority. Within the Action for Inclusion group, we provided research evidence on the topic and asked officials in city or municipal level policy and practice to share their own experiences of encouraging parental involvement in young people’s education. They were asked to identify barriers that inhibited positive home-community-school collaboration and plan some form of tangible reform in their cities. The focus of reform was envisaged as flexible; it could involve developing new programmes or mean adapting existing strategies or content of programmes, or it might involve planning strategic approaches within municipalities to win support and develop resourcing for these initiatives. Throughout meetings, we shared peer feedback on the plans, offering constructive criticism and shared resources among participants. As a result of the collaborative process, we are sharing the examples of the city plans to improve parental involvement with other European cities in order to seek better results for pupils at risk of educational exclusion. These plans, in their entirety can be seen here. The aim of this particular report is to summarise the collective experience of working with senior staff across the six cities involved in the education group as they developed their reforms in the area of migrant parental engagement. It aims to reflect on the experience of the process and summarise some issues that arose from the research scoping and practice in shaping city-level interventions. The report aims to consider the extent to which, within this process, the cities were successful and explain some of the future plans emerging from the initiative.

"Das Projekt sollte, ursprünglich im Auftrag der Nationalen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Leopoldina), die Mechanismen und Bedingungen der Entstehung ethnischer Unterschiede in Bildungsbeteiligung, schulischen Leistungen und Abschlüssen klären bzw. Felder aufdecken, in denen bisher eine solche Klärung nicht vorlag. Hintergrund war die Absicht, für die öffentlichen und politischen Diskussionen den Stand der wissenschaftlich belastbaren Zusammenhänge zu dokumentieren und damit für eventuelle Maßnahmen hinreichend starke Belege für hier relevante kausale Effekte zu liefern. Die Arbeit konzentrierte sich auf die Dokumentation des einigermaßen gesicherten Wissenstandes, die Identifikation bisher offener Felder, einige in der Öffentlichkeit ausgetragene Kontroversen und die Nachweise der Effektivität bestimmter Maßnahmen, etwa die Frage nach den Auswirkungen der Bildungssysteme, den Effekten des Vorschulbesuchs, sozialer und ethnischer Konzentrationen oder spezieller Fördermaßnahmen wie Sprachförderung, Sommerschulen oder ""multikulturelle"" Programme. Das Projekt wurde mit der Erarbeitung eines theoretischen Modells, einigen darauf aufbauenden empirischen Analysen und verschiedenen Publikationen dazu und zur Thematik allgemein abgeschlossen. Eine zentrale Publikation ist der von Claudia Diehl, Christian Hunkler und Cornelia Kristen herausgegebene Sammelband ""Ethnische Ungleichheiten im Bildungsverlauf – Mechanismen, Befunde, Debatten"", der auf den im Rahmen des Projekts erstellten Expertisen basiert."