Accompanying Research of a Funding Project of the „Qualitätsoffensive Lehrerbildung“

Design and Results Using the Example of “Inclusion and Heterogeneity”

Abstract

With the joint Qualitätsoffensive Lehrerbildung (QLB) of the Federal Government and the Länder, a complex funding program was established to sustainably improve the quality of teacher training. In such programs, accompanying research has the important task of analyzing the effectiveness of the measures developed at the universities. So far, however, there is a lack of empirical work that illustrates how such scientific monitoring was implemented in the QLB-funded projects. This article takes up this perspective by presenting the design of the accompanying research on the measures of the Freiburg School of Education FACE and illustrating it with results on the measure “Inclusion and Heterogeneity”. It examines whether student teachers’ inclusion-related beliefs and attitudes as well as their self-assessed competences have changed as a result of the measures initiated in Freiburg in the course of the QLB. The results show that the implemented measures were associated with positive changes in students’ inclusive beliefs and attitudes, but not in their self-assessed competencies. Findings are available both for the cross-sectional comparison of different cohorts and for the observation of a cohort of students over the course of their studies. However, changes were not consistently observable for all inclusion-related aspects and degree programs examined. The article exemplifies the possibilities and limitations of accompanying research on QLB-funded projects.