Bildung Psychology

Theory and Practice of Use Inspired Basic Research

Dagmar Strohmeier, Petra Wagner, Barbara Schober, Dagmar Strohmeier, Petra Wagner, Barbara Schober

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367519186
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351329743
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Educational Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The concept of Bildung-Psychology, as developed by Christiane Spiel and her colleagues, combines ideas from developmental and educational psychology to describe educational processes with a strong focus on lifelong learning. Bildung-Psychology is concerned with all educational processes contributing to the development of individuals, as well as all conditions and measures potentially influencing these processes, and it aims to stimulate integrative use inspired basic research in the field of education. The structural model of Bildung-Psychology contains three dimensions: (1) the Bildung-career, (2) several functional areas, and (3) different levels of activities. The theoretical framework systematically classifies psychological actions in the field of education.

This book combines theoretical pieces discussing important conceptual topics within Bildung-Psychology, with empirical contributions focused on different phases of the Bildung-career. The studies were conducted in countries across Europe, and across the various age-specific educational phases in the Bildung-career. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Developmental Psychology.

Overcoming the ivory tower: Transfer and societal responsibility as crucial aspects of the Bildung-Psychology approach

Barbara Schober, Laura Brandt, Marlene Kollmayer and Christiane Spiel

ABSTRACT
Strong evidence indicates the importance of successful education for individuals as well as for society as a whole; however, evidence-based knowledge from educational psychology is frequently not (successfully) transferred to decision-makers and practitioners. Besides, there is an increasing demand for transfer of academic knowledge in general to help resolve diverse societal challenges – codified as the obligation of universities to perform a Third Mission. This paper aims to demonstrate Bildung-Psychology’s contribution to successful knowledge transfer. Two examples from Bildung-Psychology illustrate how teaching and research activities can contribute to fulfilling universities’ Third Mission. By localizing these activities within the structure model of Bildung-Psychology, we aim to depict how this framework may serve as a role model for other scientific fields to build a firm basis for successful transfer.

The high relevance of progress in transfer in the field of education

Studies clearly indicate the importance of high-quality education for society as a whole and also for the individual. It is well established that education is one of the best predictors of health, job satisfaction and subjective success in life (e.g., Oreopoulos, Page, & Stevens, 2006; Oreopoulos & Salvanes, 2011). In addition, there is a significant positive effect of quality of education on economic growth (Hanushek & Kimko, 2000; Heckman, 2008). However, in educational practice, we witness many reforms that seem to be ill-designed ‘education experiments’ rather than sustainably planned processes of change. In many cases, this leads to unpredictable costs for individuals and for society (Woessmann & Piopiunik, 2009); see e.g., G8/G9 in Germany, i.e., reducing the number of school years until graduation in academic-track secondary schooling from nine to eight (Kühn, van Ackeren, Bellenberg, Reintjes, & im Brahm, 2013). Evidence-based knowledge from educational psychology and education economics – e.g., regarding causal effects of class size (Wilberg & Rost, 1997, 1999; Wild & Rost, 1995), the differential impact of polynomial school systems (Hanushek & Woessmann, 2007) or labormarket and student achievement outcomes of central school exit examinations (Jürgens, Schneider, & Büchel, 2005; Piopiunik, Schwerdt, & Woessmann, 2013) – seems to be frequently ignored by decision-makers and practitioners.

This theory-practice problem has long been a topic of debate in the field of education (e.g., Day, Fernandez, Hauge, & Møller, 2000; Usher & Bryant, 2014). However, the question inevitably arises as to whether the intersection of theory and practice necessarily represents a dilemma. As Kurt Lewin said: ‘There’s nothing more practical than a good theory’ (Lewin, 1952, p. 169). This implies that theory and practice can go quite well together if a theory is understood as an (empirically testable and potentially falsifiable) model of causalities and relationships in a specific context. Thus, one might argue that the real problem lies not in an unhappy marriage of theory and practice, but in a lack of transfer from science, and in particular from universities – as the major producers of scientific knowledge – to society. In this view, despite all existing efforts to enhance transfer from science to educational systems (e.g., Gräsel, 2010), educational research is still trapped in the so-called ivory tower , which symbolizes ‘the perceived detachment of universities from the real needs of real people in a real world’ (Random House, 1993, p. 1017).

Since the year 2000, over 1000 papers including the term ‘ivory tower’ in their title have been published (according to a Google Scholar search). A large proportion of these publications focus on the field of education, indicating either that this scientific field suffers acutely from a lack of transfer from science to society or – put in more positive terms – that the field is particularly aware of this specific challenge for academia. In any case, the urgent need for new approaches to increase transfer from science to society in this context is obvious

This paper aims at demonstrating Bildung-Psychology’s contribution to successful knowledge transfer in the context of increasing demand for transfer of academic knowledge to help resolve diverse societal challenges. Two examples were chosen to illustrate how teaching and research activities from the field of Bildung-Psychology can contribute to meet this need. By localizing these activities within the structure model of Bildung-Psychology, we aim to depict how this framework can serve as a model for other scientific fields in building a firm basis for successful transfer.

Bildung-psychology: transfer as an immanent characteristic

Indeed, there is not only strong evidence as mentioned before, but also wide consensus in the field of education that better transfer of scientific knowledge to society is important and needs to be accelerated (see e.g., the special issue Understanding the Public Understanding of Science: Psychological Approaches , Educational Psychologist, 2014; BMBF, 2016). However, addressing this concern remains elusive as long as initiatives aimed at ameliorating it are not systematized and interconnected, and thus cannot learn from each other. To date, research in educational psychology has been characterized by tension between its basic and its applied missions, leading to a fragmentation of the field (Pintrich, 2000; Scheurman, Heeringa, Rocklin, & Lohman, 1993): On the one hand, educational research aims at developing a basic understanding of learning, development, cognition, and motivation, with a focus on the individual learner. On the other hand, it is concerned with the application of evidence-based knowledge to improve educational contexts. Even though these two missions seemingly build well off of each other, in the broad field of education research, they are pursued disjointly. Hence, educational psychology lacks an integrative and compelling model or framework that allows for systematic representations and the interconnection of various activities (Spiel & Schober, in press).

Bildung-Psychology could contribute to overcoming this situation – it focuses on highly practice-oriented issues and is based on an integrative conceptual framework, designed to systematically bring together topics relevant to progress in transfer in the field of education (Spiel, Reimann, Wagner, & Schober, 2008). As described in the Editorial of this special issue (Wagner, Strohmeier, & Schober, 2016), Bildung-Psychology is explicitly concerned with all processes that contribute to the development of components constituting an individual’s Bildung – consisting of occupational-technical qualifications and social-cultural competencies – as well as with all conditions and measures that can influence (i.e., initiate, maintain, support, and/or optimize) these processes (e.g., teachers’ instructions, teacher education) (Spiel et al., 2008). The conditions and measures that can influence these processes (1) refer to the various age-specific educational phases of an individual, (2) require differential functional areas in the sense of concrete activities, and (3) refer to different levels of activity , which are defined in accordance with the ecological model presented by Bronfenbrenner (e.g., Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). The systematic alignment of these three dimensions creates the structure model of Bildung-Psychology. Hence, Bildung-Psychology incorporates the core idea of lifelong learning (LLL), which has been gaining significance in European educational policies in recent years (e.g., Commission of the European Communities, 2000). LLL is represented in the structure model of Bildung-Psychology through the Bildung-career dimension, ranging from infancy to advanced adulthood.

Moreover, the conception of Bildung-Psychology is fundamentally grounded in a ‘use-inspired basic research’ approach (Stokes, 1997), which seeks to produce (basic) knowledge within the context of solving practical problems, and to analyze and directly change educational processes by explicitly addressing the dissemination of available knowledge to practitioners (Karoly, Boekaerts, & Maes, 2005). This use-inspired basic research approach is represented in the structure model of Bildung-Psychology through the different functional areas (research, counseling, prevention, intervention and monitoring/evaluation) and through the different levels of activity (micro/individual, meso/institutional, macro/systemic). Therefore, transfer is an explicit and immanent characteristic of the Bildung-Psychology approach.

While there are a range of transfer definitions and many different forms of transfer can be identified (e.g., Gräsel, 2010; Gräsel, Jäger, & Willke, 2006), within Bildung-Psychology, transfer is understood as an underlying basic orientation and structure for research which is not a unidirectional concept but rather a cycle: Societal problems come to (or are brought to) scientists’ attention and are picked up by them (practice to science transfer), with scientists conducting research (ideally by including practitioners and policy-makers). Finally, attempts are made to implement the results of this research as sustainable solutions in practice (transfer from science to practice). This basic idea of an underlying structure for research – not just added as an afterthought – is also in line with new concepts demanding a systematic integration of intervention and implementation research (see the ‘I³-Approach’ by Spiel, Schober, and Strohmeier (2016).

Transfer is, however, not only a crucial premise for the implementation of successful education. There is a broader trend addressing the need for successful transfer from science to society to approach the growing public challenges of our time on a larger scale.

Transfer as an emerging challenge for universities

When debating universities’ role in relation to society, reference is frequently made to the implicit social contract between science and society. Traditionally, this contract was based on the understanding that universities will provide research and teaching in return for public funding, with a high degree of institutional autonomy (Gibbons, 1999). This interpretation of the social contract dates back to the view of ‘science as the endless frontier’ (Bush, 1945). However, since the end of the last century, the necessity of re-negotiating the social contract has been voiced, against the backdrop of growing societal challenges:

[T]he changed world of modern science and modern government means that it is imperative to search for and begin to define a new contract, or series of contracts, between the institutions of democracy and the institutions of science. The scientific community needs to reach out to justify its claim on public resources by demonstrating where and how it is relevant in solving public problems. (Guston & Keniston, 1994, p. 32)

This call has become increasingly louder, and – without questioning the high importance of basic research – experts have started to join together in order to (more) systematically disseminate knowledge to relevant actors in society on how to address growing societal challenges. Amongst other associations, the International Panel on Social Progress was formed in 2014 with the aim of ‘uniting the world’s leading researchers, sociologists, and economists in a single effort: Developing research-based, multi-disciplinary, non-partisan, action-driven solutions to the most pressing challenges of our time.’ (International Panel on Social Progress, 2016). This panel will deliver a report (to be launched in 2017) addressed to all social actors, movements, organizations, politicians and decision-makers, in order to provide them with high-quality expert advice on questions of relevance to social change, authored by over 250 experts from various fields. Studies from Bildung-Psychology will contribute to this by specifically focusing on how education can promote social progress (Spiel, 2016).

The call for transfer to the ‘outside world’ is especially addressed to universities, which have long been perceived as an inward-looking Republic of Scholars (Bleiklie, Laredo, & Sörlin, 2007) – symbolized by the ivory tower. The emerging expectation that universities not only produce new knowledge but do so with social and economic perspectives in mind (e.g., European Commission, 2006), has been codified – and made into law in some countries – as the obligation of universities to perform a Third Mission (e.g., Bleiklie et al., 2007). To fulfill their Third Mission, universities are requested to use the results produced by their first (teaching) and second missions (research) to address growing social, economic and societal challenges. This implies taking responsibility, actively and consciously, for the society on whose behalf they are working (European Commission, 2011). The Third Mission has tw...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Bildung-Psychology: Theory and practice of use inspired basic research
• 1. Overcoming the ivory tower: Transfer and societal responsibility as crucial aspects of the Bildung-Psychology approach
• 2. Social-emotional development: From theory to practice
• 3. Bildung-Psychology and implementation science
• 4. Gender role self-concept at school start and its impact on academic self-concept and performance in mathematics and reading
• 5. School burnout and engagement profiles among digital natives in Finland: a person-oriented approach
• 6. Fostering pupils’ lifelong learning competencies in the classroom: evaluation of a training programme using a multivariate multilevel growth curve approach
• 7. The implementation and evaluation of the ViSC program in Cyprus: challenges of cross-national dissemination and evaluation results
• 8. A Bildung-psychological investigation into student motives: McKinsey- or von Humboldt-oriented?
• Index