Research Priority 1: Education and Participation in Society

Prof. Dr. Janna Teltemann

Education and Participation in Society are interdependent: participation is a prerequisite for educational processes, just as education is a prerequisite for participation. Within the research conducted in this Research Priority, education is understood as the acquisition of knowledge and skills, self-development, personal development, and education for democracy. Education takes place throughout the life course and in various formal, non-formal, and informal contexts. In modern, rapidly transforming societies, education takes place against a backdrop of diverse development opportunities, but also multiple social uncertainties, risks, and crises. Profound processes such as digitalisation, demographic change, increasing diversity, international conflicts, and climate change have far-reaching effects on lifestyles and established knowledge systems. Educational institutions and settings, as well as child and youth welfare and social services, have the task of ensuring appropriate and high-quality, gender- and diversity-sensitive educational provision, facilitating learning and educational processes, and enabling educational qualifications that ensure participation in changing societies.

As educational research has shown in recent decades, the education system in Germany has not been sufficiently successful in ensuring high-quality, equal, and non-discriminatory participation. From the perspective of participation in society, the close link between education and social background is particularly problematic. While extensive research has been conducted to describe and, in some cases, explain this phenomenon, there is still a great need for knowledge about how this link can be counteracted through the design of educational provision. The University of Hildesheim has a long tradition of comprehensive research into education systems, practices, transitions, and education and learning processes throughout the life course. This Research Priority therefore focuses on early childhood, school, out-of-school, political, cultural, and linguistic education and further and continuing education, as well as child and youth welfare and social services.

The following topics, among others, are addressed within this Research Priority on Education and Participation in Society:

School-related educational research at the University of Hildesheim aims to secure the future prospects of children and young people, in particular by developing the competences necessary for social participation. The focus is on language skills such as reading and writing, as well as mathematics and science, and digital competences, and their respective links to cross-cutting issues such as education for sustainable development, diversity, migration, and education for democracy. Particular attention is paid to analysing and reducing the link between educational success and background factors, for example through the use of interventions or technologies to reduce educational disadvantage, especially in so-called STEM subjects. Promoting career orientation through the development, evaluation, and transfer of systematic educational and support provision—particularly at transitions and interfaces between educational institutions—is also a priority.

A shared point of reference for subject didactics, educational science, and educational-psychological research on teaching and learning, as well as for research on the teaching profession and professionalisation, is provided by core practices of professional action—both as potential factors shaping learners’ competence development and as target competences in the initial and continuing education of teachers and other members of multi-professional teams.

Research on schools and teaching focuses, first, on subject-specific and cross-curricular design features of instruction and their contribution to achieving instructional goals, as well as on diagnosing learning prerequisites and learning trajectories, including the use of digital technologies and AI. In addition, it examines the effects of instructional design and out-of-class support measures, as well as of a positive school climate and a democratic, inclusive, and learning-supportive school culture, on learners’ competence development and personal development, career orientation, and education for democracy—across diverse learning prerequisites—and on the link between educational outcomes and background factors. There are points of connection with the research focus Child and youth welfare, early childhood and out-of-school education, and social services.

Research on the teaching profession and professionalisation focuses on approaches to fostering competences in lesson planning and classroom enactment—for example, complexity-reduced planning tasks, professionalisation-oriented documentation formats, virtual learning environments, lesson video analysis, and role-play- and video-based teaching simulations. Other focal areas include strengthening teachers’ evidence orientation across different career stages and ensuring high-quality instruction.

Full-day care provision and education, the everyday promotion of non-discriminatory participation and educational pathways, and access to formal education for young people in a wide range of life circumstances are at the heart of child and youth welfare, which—alongside out-of-school education and research on early childhood education—forms this focus area. Research on early childhood education examines the institutional, organisational and professional conditions, as well as practices in aesthetic and cultural education, education in movement and physical development, and language and mathematics education. It takes multilingualism into account and also addresses issues of diagnostic assessment as well as socio-cultural, developmental-psychological and neurobiological foundations. Going beyond single institutional contexts, this focus also considers the importance of media and material contexts for growing up. A particular emphasis is placed on educational media. Educational processes in childhood and adolescence are examined in the context of family environments, mediatised and, in particular, digital environments. In this context, research also addresses young people’s sensory experiences and embodied spaces for action in their societal settings.

As inclusive childhood and youth educational research, this focus area examines the participation of all young people—especially at transitions and interfaces—from a multidisciplinary and multi-professional perspective. A future focus will also be on child protection, vulnerability, and the agency and active participation of children, adolescents, young adults and families within and in relation to the infrastructure of education, upbringing and care. This Research Priority is characterised by gender- and diversity-reflexive approaches and addresses the question of how exposure to specific forms of discrimination is of intersectional relevance for its target groups.

Cultural, political, and language education are essential components of a networked general education geared towards enabling comprehensive participation in society. This focus area examines the conditions and manifestations of participation in society under the perspective of equal opportunities, as they emerge in the fields and practices of cultural, political, and language education. A particular focus is placed on non-formal and informal educational contexts, as well as interdisciplinary approaches.

At the University of Hildesheim, cultural education is examined from an intersectional perspective with regard to theory, aesthetic mediation and practice, and cultural and educational policy structures. Participation in society in (non-)formal educational settings is explored interdisciplinarily through musical, visual, embodied, and language-based aesthetic practices. Other research topics and focal areas include: reception practices and informal learning processes in digital media; educational media; cultural education as education for democracy; children’s visual practices; art and cultural mediation in early childhood; literary processes in childhood; participatory and experimental practices in children’s and youth theatre; audience research and audience behaviour; citizenship in arts and cultural education; and the postcolonial and transformative effects of culture.

At the University of Hildesheim, political education encompasses, among other fields, education for democracy, migration and diversity research, cultural and historical education, and education for sustainable development. Its starting point and objective is to enable comprehensive participation in society, which brings the empirical analysis of enabling conditions into focus. Further research emphases include narrative-based political education and the role of emotions in subject didactics in the humanities and social sciences. Language participation—that is, the receptive and productive capacity to take part in educational processes and to engage actively in political, cultural, and other institutional settings—is explored in the areas of accessible communication, German as a second language, intercultural communication, and translation studies. The focus is on language use in institutional contexts and (in-)formal education, reducing communication barriers, and providing empirically grounded provision. Political decisions and institutional prerequisites for language participation are systematically taken into account.

• Institute for Business Administration and Information Systems
• Institute of Fine Arts and Arts Studies
• Institute of Biology and Chemistry
• Institute of German Language and Literature
• Institute of English Language and Literature
• Institute of Educational Sciences
• Institute of Intercultural Communication
• Institute for Cultural Policy
• Institute for Mathematics and Applied Informatics
• Institute for Media, Theatre, and Popular Culture
• Institute of Physics
• Institute of Social and Organisational Pedagogy
• Institute for Social Sciences
• Institute for Translation Studies and Specialised Communication

• Lower Saxony Competence Center Early Childhood
• Center for Diversity, Democracy and Inclusion in Education (ZBI)
• Herder-Kolleg – Center for Transdisciplinary Cultural Research
• ZfG Center for Gender Studies 
• Center for Teacher Training and Educational Research (CeLeB)

• Bundesakademie für kulturelle Bildung (Federal Academy for Cultural Education)
• Niedersächsische Landeszentrale für politische Bildung (Lower Saxony State Agency for Civic Education)
• UNICEF (Programm Kinderrechteschulen/ Kinderrechteschulnetzwerk - child rights education and child-friendly schools)
• Deutsche Kinder- und Jugendstiftung (German Children and Youth Foundation)
• Deutsche Gesellschaft für Demokratiepädagogik (German Association for Democracy Education)
• Niedersächsisches Landesinstitut für schulische Qualitätsentwicklung (Lower Saxony State Institute for School Quality Development)
• fair@school competition organized by the Antidiskriminierungsstelle des Bundes (Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency) and Cornelsen Verlag
• Netzwerk Schule ohne Rassismus - Schule mit Courage (Schools Without Racism - Schools with Courage Network)

• Bildungsgeschichten, Bildungsmedien, sozialistische Persönlichkeitsbildung (funded by the BMBF – Federal Ministry of Education and Research; 2nd project phase “MythErz”; collaborative project with Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the University of Rostock, and DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education)
• Bildungssysteme und migrationsspezifische Bildungsungleichheit: Harmonisierung von Kontextdaten aus internationalen Schulleistungsstudien zur Analyse von Bildungssystemeffekten auf die Entwicklung migrationsspezifischer Kompetenzungleichheiten (DFG – German Research Foundation)
• Cumulativer und curricular vernetzter Aufbau digitalisierungsbezogener Kompetenzen zukünftiger Lehrkräfte (Cu2RVE; “Qualitätsoffensive Lehrerbildung” – Quality Initiative for Teacher Education)
• Demokratiebildung in und durch kulturelle Bildung (KuBiDemo; funded by the BMBF – Federal Ministry of Education and Research)
• DiSiKit Research - Diversitätsreflexive Spielmaterialien. Appgestützte Praxisbegleitung in Kitas (part of the collaborative project “DiSiKit”; funded by the BMBF and ESF Plus – European Social Fund Plus)
• Förderung von Kompetenzen der Diagnose des wissenschaftlichen Denkens (DiaWiDe; DFG – German Research Foundation; part of Research Unit 2385 “Förderung von Diagnosekompetenzen in simulationsbasierten Lernumgebungen in der Hochschule” (COSIMA))
• Formatives Assessment beim Schreiben: Automatisiertes Feedback unter Verwendung von künstlicher Intelligenz (FORMAT; BMBF junior research group / early-career research group)
• INTRACOMP - Intercultural and transcultural competence through collaborative cultural expression (Horizon Europe)
• Orte, Menschen, Reflexionen – DDR-digital (Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung – Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in East Germany)
• Paradoxe Bildung – Widerstand – Überleben. Der Geheime Unterricht und Kinderzeichnungen im KZ-Ravensbrück (DFG – German Research Foundation)
• Partizipation als Gelingensbedingung von Qualitätsentwicklung in Ganztagsgrundschulen (PaQuaGGS) (BMBF funding line “Veränderungsprozesse in Bildungseinrichtungen und hierauf bezogener Maßnahmen der Qualitätssicherung und -entwicklung”)
• SOBIS - Sozial- und Bildungsinfrastruktur – Sozialpädagogisches Prozessieren von Kindheiten (“Wissenschaftsräume Niedersachsen”; funded by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture (MWK) and the VolkswagenStiftung; collaborative project with the University of Osnabrück, Hochschule Emden/Leer - University of Applied Sciences, and Hannover University of Applied Sciences and Arts)
• Teaching Labs für die Analyse und Förderung von Core Teaching Practices (“Wissenschaftsräume Niedersachsen”; funded by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture (MWK) and the VolkswagenStiftung; collaborative project with TU Braunschweig and Leibniz University Hannover)
• TRANSLANG – Internationalisierung in der Lehramtsbildung (DAAD – German Academic Exchange Service)
• BeSt F:IT - Entwicklung eines virtuellen IT-Berufs- und Studienorientierungsangebots für Frauen (funded by the BMBF – Federal Ministry of Education and Research)
• Digital C@mpus-le@rning: Implementierung und Transfer digital unterstützter Lehrformate für selbstgesteuertes, virtuell-räumliches und ko-kreativ-kollaboratives Lernen
• KuSe: Das Recht auf Kulturelle (Selbst)Bildung (funded by the BMBF – Federal Ministry of Education and Research)
• Dialoguing@rts – Advancing Cultural Literacy for Social Inclusion through Dialogical Arts Education (EU Horizon)

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• Heinicke, Julius (Sub.-Hg.): Applied Performance in Western Europe, in: Prentki, Tim; Breed, Ananda (eds.): The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance Vol. 1. London / New York: Routledge, 2021.
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• Kraus, U., Zahn, C., Reiber, T., Preiß, S. (2018). A model-based general relativity course for physics teachers.Electronic Proc. of the ESERA 2017 Conf., 485–496.
• Kraus, U., Zahn, C., Weissenborn, S. (2021). Introducing the geometric concepts of general relativity with sector models. In M. Kersting & D. Blair (eds.), Teaching Einsteinian Physics in Schools: An Essential Guide for Teachers in Training and Practice.Routledge.
• Kurpiers, N., Lampe, V., Zimmermann, T. (2023). Investigation of the Psychological Wellbeing after a One-Week- Skiing Intervention with Childhood Cancer Survivors. Journal of Physical Medicine Rehabilitation Studies & Reports 5(5): 1–5.
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• Teltemann, Janna; Reinhard Schunck: Education systems, school segregation, and second-generation immigrants’ educational success: Evidence from a country-fixed effects approach using three waves of PISA. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 57(6): 401–424
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