Starting point:

The development of inclusive educational provision and the design of teaching and learning processes in the context of increasing digitalization are creating growing pressure on schools and thus greater uncertainty. As a “pedagogical unit of action,” the individual school is tasked with developing viable concepts for inclusive and “digital” education.

According to a (widely shared) understanding, school development is a goal-oriented, systematic, and reflective process of change, for whose implementation and effects the school leadership and teachers themselves are primarily responsible. Dealing productively with uncertainty requires organizational development, instructional development, and staff development. School development can therefore be understood as an attempt to create certainty, control, and predictability within a context of action that is strongly shaped by uncertainty.

This points to a tension between feasibility and uncertainty that, in debates on school development, is mostly resolved one-sidedly in favor of feasibility. Yet the antinomic and dialectical structure of the problem field becomes apparent: while school development processes aim to turn uncertainty in a productive direction, the innovation required to do so simultaneously contributes to increasing uncertainty itself.

Research interest:

Against the background of societal change, individual schools and their actors face the challenge of jointly shaping school development processes. Key topics at present include dealing with heterogeneous learner groups and implementing inclusive teaching, establishing all-day schooling, and implementing “digital” education. The task of developing viable concepts for these areas creates growing pressure on schools—and thus more uncertainty.

To gain a deeper understanding of school development processes, it is advisable—alongside the use of quantitative data (e.g., from questionnaire surveys involving different stakeholders)—to take a more in-depth look at processes on the basis of qualitative data. Combining these approaches may offer potential for generating knowledge about how actors within individual schools jointly shape development under conditions of growing pressure driven by current education policy discourses and decisions. The focus here will be on how inherent antinomic tensions and uncertainties are dealt with. For empirical investigation, research contexts are recommended that have already been developed within several of our own research projects on the topics mentioned above, and for which empirical findings already exist that can be built upon.

Research questions:

• How do schools respond to the growing pressure arising from current education policy discourses and decisions, and what measures do they develop in response?
• How do teachers learn within school development projects?
• How do they deal with the antinomic tensions and uncertainties inherent in school development processes?
• What role do forms of collaboration play in this context?

People involved:

• Prof. Dr. Dagmar Killus (Schulpädagogik),
• Jessica Kruska (Schulpädagogik),
• Prof. Dr. Julia Schwanewedel (Biologiedidaktik)