Data-based school development processes for reorganizing individual schools in the long term. A secondary analysis of qualitative longitudinal data on individual schools from 2005 to 2013.

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Viola Hartung-Beck; Professorin Dr. Barbara Muslic
• Subject Area: Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism
• Term: from 2017 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 385971509

Questions on the controllability of school development processes represent one of the main topics of educational research in Germany, not only since the PISA study. The relating research focuses on the idea of the new educational governance. These studies have generated a comprehensive knowledge e.g. about the use of data from state-wide surveys and comparative studies or centralized state-wide examinations. Current desiderates are: 1) In which way is organizational action changing in conjunction of single governance management instruments with changes of the environment of schools in a long time period? 2) And how stable and sustainable does this change in action proof within the schools? The applied study proposes that implementing these instruments causes a need to change, describable like an obligation to reorganize the organization. That means the redesign of organizational structures in schools (e.g. the establishment of control groups). The aim of this study is reconstructing a long term and systematic organizational development process in schools (possibilities for reorganization) including the consideration of changes of the environment of schools. The proposed project aims at developing a multidimensional model providing a typology of organizational school development processes. This study sets out to contribute a revision or expansion to the previous models of school development. The study is based on a secondary analysis of longitudinal qualitative single case studies on schools consisting of 351 problem-based interviews resulting from three projects (2005 to 2013). Matching these primary studies concludes a long-term perspective over a period of up to seven years. This provides the opportunity to ask several new questions: e.g. which influence do educational reforms provide on organizational action in schools? Is the change sustainable in relation to the policy instruments and the quality of work in schools? Therefore an approach of professional organizations will be transferred on schools and linked with the qualitative content analysis. The aim of this study is to observe patterns of school development which can be explained by the need of change in the environment of schools. The analysis focuses organizational action in schools changing the organizational structure in association with the moment of educational reform (e.g. state-wide surveys).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants