Project Details
Projekt
Mechanism of elite formation in the German Education System
Applicant
Professor Dr. Werner Helsper, since 10/2015
Subject Area
Education Systems and Educational Institutions
Term
from 2011 to 2019
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 184751107
The research unit analyses these processes of social construction and the creation of excellence from early childhood education and care (ECEC) to higher education, and the meaning for recipients of education and professionals in Germany. In the first funding phase, six research projects explore the educational discourses on elites and excellence, the cooperation between families and institutions in child care and primary schools, the exclusive secondary school segment, elite universities with claims of excellence, and social distinction in juvenile peer worlds. Contrasting comparison cases are also generally considered.Main aspects of cooperation across projects in the first funding phase were development of the concept of mechanism of elite formation, the analysis of selection criteria, choosing practices at educational transitions and also enclosed mechanisms of distinction processes and constructions of coherence as well as the examination of implementation and dissemination of education policydriven excellence and elite semantics.Applying the second funding phase, the research unit gains further to explore the ongoing transformation of discourses on excellence and equality and the changes of exclusive education institutions in chronological comparison, changes of selection strategies and educational orientation of parents with preschool-age and primary school-age children and also education biographies and interpretative patterns of excellence of adolescents at exclusive secondary schools in transition to higher education or work life in terms of qualitative longitudinal studies, supplemented by two additional surveys focusing also the quantitative perspective of processes. Moreover, a typology of argumentations for exclusive educational institutions should be systematically elaborated and the significance of international ECEC as well as primary and secondary schools is taken into account considering the process of internationalisation of the German educational system and transnational elite formation. In doing so, a methodically innovative connecting between micro analytical, qualitative studies and quantitative surveys takes place. The findings of the research unit will shed light on the dynamics of elite formation in chronological comparison, on selection strategies, processes and conflicts in longitudinal perspective, on early educational biographical careers of elites and also on impacts on the entire educational system.
DFG Programme
Research Units
Ehemaliger Antragsteller
Professor Dr. Heinz-Hermann Krüger, until 9/2015
