The aim of this study is to empirically investigate the reasons for regional disparities in educational expansion in Germany (i.e., rising rates of general university entrance qualification) on the basis of theoretically relevant influencing factors: changes in school policies, changes in social structure, or general social modernization…

This paper explores comparatively and historically why Nordic and Continental welfare and education regimes differ in the degree of comprehensiveness of their primary and lower secondary school systems. It analyses how school reforms, reform attempts and coalitions in the post-war decades were shaped by different cleavage structures in Norway and…

One of the main discussions in higher education is whether universities have appropriately adapted their structures and processes in response to the New Public Management (NPM) reforms and the Bologna Process. There are no profound empirical investigations on the extent to which faculties take elements of the reforms into account in terms of…

A lot of structural reforms of education system have been and are being discussed at length in the general public and among experts. Many hope this discussion will lead to progress in the form of structural measures and frequently point to PISA as evidence in support of this hope. However, educational research beyond Pisa shows that in many cases,…

Friedrich Fröbel is known as the founder of the modern kindergarten and for his development of novel learning materials called Gifts and Occupations. One of the foci of Fröbel's programme was mathematical education, which he addressed and taught through various activities that encouraged the largely implicit transmission of mathematical…

Since the implementation of the Excellence Initiative and the Excellence Strategy, German higher education institutions have been restructuring university governance, especially those selected as Universities of Excellence. This study uses a holistic and mission-related integrated governance approach to conduct a qualitative analysis of the…

This article describes and analyzes the debate about inclusion against the backdrop of school reform in Germany. The tiered school system has caused significant controversies during the past decades and underwent changes that often yielded ambiguous results with regards to social and educational justice. Another major change of the system is now…

The introduction of structured doctoral programs (SDPs) is changing the conditions of doctoral training in Europe and worldwide. SDPs were introduced to reorganize doctoral training to make it more transparent and to improve the quality of doctoral training and supervision. This article suggests a conceptual framework to assess the outcome of…

This is a conceptual paper that examines the origin and development of universities and their current role in global society. There has been an unprecedented and exponential growth of technology and artificial intelligence capabilities over the past ten years which is challenging current working practices and affecting all areas of society. The…

Prior research suggests that teachers' positive perceptions of a reform are key when it comes to its successful implementation. The importance of teachers as enactors of change efforts results from their close tie to what is happening in the classroom. This suggests that without persuaded change agents, innovations are unlikely to be implemented…

PISA test data from 2000 to today have shown Germany's education system is one of the most inequitable within the OECD, with high correlations between student background and achievement outcomes. Scholars have identified the highly differentiated school structure, which tracks students as young as 10 years old, as a central cause. This scholarship…

The central focus of this book is the concept of higher education reform in the light of an international and global comparative perspective. After decades of far-reaching reform, higher education around the world has profoundly changed and now has to face the challenges of the present. This volume takes a close look at these changes, the drivers…

Previous work has not yet comparatively studied which forms of peace education (PE) have been adopted in national laws. Through content analysis of policy documents, we seek to find out why the Colombian Congress established PE as mandatory content across all educational levels in 2014 in a postwar phase, while the German Standing Conference of…

This book provides significant information regarding the policies and provisions for early childhood teacher education programs in universities in fourteen different countries. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) is expanding rapidly across the globe with unprecedented numbers of children attending EC centres, requiring the investment in…

This paper reports on the first stage of an international comparative study for the project "'Digital educational architectures: Open learning resources in distributed learning infrastructures--EduArc,'" funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. This study reviews the situation of digital educational resources (or…