Changing Networks in Education, Science, and Society

Patrick Sunnen

Building upon the insights and findings of the university-funded exploratory project “Processes of Collaborative Learning among Siblings” (2008-2010), we shall extend and deepen our investigations on how young cross-age peers collaboratively learn while coping with literacy and technology activities. Although there is a large body of literature on issues of collaborative learning, still little is known when it comes to analyse collaborative learning processes among young peers at a micro-level. The objectives of this qualitative research project are: to refine the theoretical framework in order to grasp collaborative learning processes; to develop a methodological design to trace collaborative learning processes at a micro level; to construct a body of data showing evidence of collaborative learning and the processes leading to it to gain further knowledge about the development and the realisation of collaborative learning processes among peers.

Gert Biesta, Justin Powell

This research project (2014–17) aims to enhance understanding of the impact of education research policy on the shape and approaches of educational research and scholarship in different national contexts and settings through four cases studies—the UK, Germany, Norway, and Belgium. Focusing on developments since the early 1990s and explicit comparison of these four countries in Europe, we analyse the extent to which and the ways in which such policies have managed to reach their goals, altering the direction of existing research traditions and trajectories. We seek to make visible what the main drivers of such policy developments and initiatives are, with particular attention to the question to what extent such drivers are local, regional, national or supranational/global. We are particularly interested to map and understand converging and diverging patterns and developments as we contrast the differential dynamics of education research policy in this sample of smaller and larger European countries, each with particular academic, language, and educational configurations. We seek to draw lessons for research policy making, both with regard to educational research and scholarship and research policy more generally.

Irina Gewinner, Andreas Hadjar, Christina Haas

Luxembourg participates for the first time in the EUROSTUDENT survey. The main aim of the EUROSTUDENT project is to collect comparable data on living and study conditions of students in European higher education. This includes socio-economic background, financial situation, access to higher education, prior pathways of students and temporary international mobility. Results may help to improve students’ higher education experiences and living conditions in Luxembourg and beyond. All higher education students in Luxembourg will receive an eMail message with the link to the questionnaire in early May 2019.

EUROSTUDENT

2018

Luxembourg National Research Fund

Coordination: Patrick Sunnen (Uni.lu); Valérie Maquil (LIST)
Collaborators: Béatrice Arend (Uni.lu); Lou Schwartz (LIST); NN (Post Doc LIST)

There is a strong recognition that solutions to face complex and intertwined societal and intellectual challenges will have to be worked out collaboratively. However, the mere joining of people’s forces does not help unless people know how to collaborate which includes coping with and overcoming emerging breakdowns as a team. In this sense, the design research project ORBIT aims at implementing and studying a digitally mediated joint problem solving (JPS) activity at an interactive tabletop that gives participants the opportunity to develop their collaboration methods by jointly overcoming breakdowns. The activity will be mediated by a tangible user interface (TUI) which has the potential to promote collaboration among the participants. The ORBIT-team will adopt a design-based research (DBR) approach focussing on two different and diverse authentic adult education settings: teacher education at the University of Luxembourg and professional training at the City of Luxembourg. The JPS activity will be designed in five iterations of design, implementation, analysis and redesign, and be put into practice during workshops in each of the two contexts. The design process will rely on user centered design methods (UCD) and on an ethnomethodological conversation analytic framework (EM/CA), combining them in a complementary way. More particularly, the EM/CA video analysis will enable the in-depth study of the development and the enactment of participants’ multimodally embodied collaboration practices when they collaborate “smoothly” and when their collaborative experience is put to the test by emerging and unpredictable breaches generated by the TUI. More precisely, the project addresses the research questions of (1) How to design a TUI-mediated joint problem-solving activity providing participants with opportunities to overcome breakdowns through collaboration? and (2) How do the participants cope with and overcome breakdowns in a joint problem-solving activity through collaboration? The design-based project is located at the interplay between technology and social action. This endeavour requires the collaboration between social scientists from the University of Luxembourg and computer scientists from the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, in this way contributing to developing the multidisciplinary research capacity of Luxembourg and its international visibility. On the one hand, the project will generate scientific knowledge on participants’ collaboration methods, and, on the other hand, it will create a powerful collaborative learning tool that can either directly be implemented in diverse educational and professional training contexts, or be adapted, thanks to the developed guidelines.

InfoMann-actTogether absl / Ministry of Equality between Women and Men

Operational head: Alyssa Grecu; Research associate: Kevin Simoes Loureiro; Principal investigator: Andreas Hadjar

The project centres on two major objectives: Firstly, the aim was to find out more about the situation of educational staff in Crèches and Maisons Relais and Foyers Scolaires in Luxembourg. The focus was on how the male and female staff experience the cooperation in the team, which competence expectations are important for them and which reservations or stereotypes they are confronted with. Second, PerSEALux was interested in the current data situation on educational staff in Luxembourg and how actors from the field of non-formal education would evaluate a national database that does not yet exist.

The project PerSEALux has been successfully finalised in June 2021. We thank all participants in the Luxembourgish Early Childhood Education and Care sector, research collaborators and project funders.

Project report PerSEALux
Pädagogisches Personal in Einrichtungen der nonformalen Bildung in Luxemburg

• Project report PerSEALux (DE)

Dr. Jennifer Dusdal; Prof. Dr. Justin J.W. Powell

• Prof. Dr. Anna Kosmützky (anna.kosmuetzky@lcss.uni-hannover.de), Leibniz Center for Science and Society, Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany
• Dr. Achim Oberg, (oberg@ifm.uni-mannheim.de), Institute for SME Research and Entrepreneurship, University of Mannheim, Germany

Developing the quality of science through research collaborations among research-producing organizations in Germany (1900–2020).

Q-KNOW comparatively and historically charts the massive expansion of science production worldwide, extending the SPHERE project (Science Production, Higher Education Research and Development, and the Knowledge Society) to address the question: How does the quality of science develop through research collaborations? Analyzing co-authored papers published in all research-producing organizations from 1900–2020, we develop a unique bibliometric dataset based on Clarivate Analytics’ Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE). We investigate how scientific publication patterns advanced according to the proportion and impact of interorganizational collaborative networks, depending on collaboration portfolios among organizations in Germany (and all partner organizations worldwide) and how these patterns are leveraged to enhance scientific quality at organizational level. The Q-KNOW project directly addresses this significant black box.

European Commission’s Comenius Network Lifelong Learning Programme (EAC/S07/12)

Michelle Brendel; Justin Powell

Since the signing of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities by many European countries, governments have considerably increased their efforts to make their education systems more inclusive, despite contrasting starting points. The right to inclusive education throughout the life course is clearly defined in the UN Convention (§ 24), yet it must be successfully transferred into national, state, and local structures and cultures. All education systems in Europe face the challenge to develop more inclusive schooling. Inclusive education success depends on the practices that teachers use every day to foster learning among diverse learners in their classrooms.

Gathering case studies from the TDiverS countries—Germany, Iceland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Spain, and Sweden—promises to enhance our understanding of barriers and facilitators of such reforms. Among the core values relating to teaching and learning as the basis for inclusive education, two will be emphasized in the cross-national comparisons of good practice: (1) valuing learner diversity (learner difference is considered as a resource and an asset), and (2) supporting all learners (teachers have high expectations for all learners). Examining characteristics such as ability, gender, culture, language, socio-economic background—as well as their intersections—the TDiverS partners (researchers and school teachers in Northern, Central, Eastern and Southern Europe) emphasize the conditions needed to teach diverse learners in these countries, focusing especially on teacher education.
Through video collection, workshops, and conferences, the project partners gather and translate inspiring examples of effective teaching approaches in heterogeneous classrooms in a variety of school subjects from across Europe.