The Promotion of Giftedness as a central event of school and classroom development is the central object of investigation for the research project Talent Promotion at the Saxon State Gymnasium St. Afra in Meissen. The state gymnasium created a new school program and wants these new developments to be accompanied by academic research. The project will last two years. The perspectives of students, teachers, pedagogical professionals at the boarding school, as well as school administration and legal guardians will be integrated in the study. The project funds were collected by the Research Group Study of Giftedness and Individual Promotion under the leadership of Christian Fischer. Carly Abbenhaus will handle mentoring issues, i.e., the close supervision of students. David Rott will tackle the more advanced aspects, such as changes to student timetables and the promotion of gifted students. After several preliminary discussions beginning last summer, an initial school visit took place in Meissen, during which the approach for the project phase was finalized. The results will be used for data-supported school and teaching development and will also be published in academic publications.
The journal School. Education. Inclusion – Journal for Qualification and Transformation (SBI) will be published by the IfE as an open access and double-blind peer reviewed online academic journal. The journal began as a further development of the QfL – Qualification for Inclusion and will be edited by a team consisting of the Research Group for Didactics and School Research in inclusive Education as well as Foundations of Inclusive Education and Special Education. The SBI sees itself as an interdisciplinary and multiparadigmatic medium which is open to all disciplines researching educational processes. Theoretical and empirical contributions of didactic, conceptional, theoretical, and methodological relevance will be published. The call for the first issue (January 2027) was recently posted and focuses on transformation. For more information, see here.
Laura McCullaugh (Research Group Research Methoods/Emprical Educational Research) succesfsully defended her PhD on February 5, 2026 and earned the grade summa cum laude. Her dissertation, “The Measurement of Student Engagement: A Critical Examination of Operational Definitions and the Development of German-Language Scale,” investigates the construct “Student Engagement,” which includes the cognitive, behavioral, and affective dimensions of classroom participation. Although this construct is quite common in the English-speaking world, the definitions and operationalization of Student Engagement prove controversial. In her dissertation, McCullagh analyzes the theoretical ambiguities which contribute to an inconsistent operationalization of this term and develops approaches to overcoming this dilemma. Based on a qualitative content analysis of English-language self-report scales, she developed a German-language measuring tool. Under the framework of a confirmatory factor analysis, the a priori postulated measuring model achieved good fit values. The results from measure invariance and item analyses, as well as an evaluative content analysis of cognitive interviews, confirm the validity of the scale’s construction and suitability for use with students between the 4th and 6th grades. The scale will be available for research purposes when the dissertation is published.
The Career Orientation Working Group, in cooperation with InterVal GmbH, has successfully secured funding for two research projects to evaluate the nationwide Career Orientation Program (BOP). Since 2008, the BOP has helped students recognize their strengths, explore career prospects, and further develop their career choice skills. The BOP is part of the Education Chains initiative and is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education, Family, Seniors, Women, and Youth (BMBFSFJ). The BOP is supervised by the Service Center for Career Orientation/Education Chains at the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) in Bonn. The research contracts will be carried out in cooperation with InterVal GmbH (main contractor) and the University of Münster (subcontractor), represented by Prof. Dr. Katja Driesel-Lange. The Career Orientation Research Group contributes its expertise in instrument development and data analysis. The evaluation, which will run from September 2025 to December 2026, consists of two projects: The first research project examines the implementation and impact of potential analyses and career orientation days in accordance with the new quality standards of 2024. The second research project deals with the state-specific variants of BOP design and its structural parameters. To answer the research questions, a comprehensive mixed-methods design will be used, involving relevant stakeholders such as students, teachers, educational institutions, and responsible administrators.
The study’s goal is to formulate recommendations for the program’s further development. Further information on the project can be found here.
| From the Research Group Early Childhood Pedagogy
Markus Kluge (Research Group Early Childhood Pedagogy) was featured as an interviewee in the documentary “The Discovery of Childhood in Art (directed by Nicola Graef). Using portraits of children from major European museums, the documentary shows how views of children changed between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. It accompanies the exhibit “Kids! Between Representation and Reality” (November 28, 2025–April 6, 2026) at the Bucerius Kunst Forum in Hamburg. The documentary was broadcast on ARTE on December 14, 2025, and can be viewed in the ARTE media library until March 13, 2026.
