How educational innovations have a lasting effect

Every year, around 250,000 young people fail to make the direct transition from school to vocational training. This particularly often affects pupils with special educational needs. Many of them initially switch to the so-called transition system, where vocational schools spend another year preparing them specifically for the search for a training place.

In order to strengthen inclusion in this field, researchers have now developed a large number of educational innovations and trialled them in practice. However, it is not always possible to integrate these into everyday school and teaching life in the long term. Over the next three years, business educators at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, together with colleagues from the Universities of Paderborn and Rostock, therefore want to research how the transfer from science to practice can be organised more successfully. The Federal Ministry of Education, Families, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth is funding the new project »Inclusion on Site« (IvO) with around 800,000 euros.

»We often find that research projects produce good and effective educational innovations, but that they cannot have a lasting impact because they fail to become structurally anchored«, explains Prof. Dr Petra Frehe-Halliwell from the University of Jena. »Though the partners from the field are familiarising themselves with the new concepts and also testing them, there is often neither time nor funds left after the end of the project to process the experiences, further develop the content, adapt it to specific target groups and thus establish it at the relevant institutions in the long term.«

Uncovering your own strengths

To make this more successful in future, the researchers in the new project want to precisely analyse the conditions for successful transfer. The predecessor project »Selbstinszenierungspraktiken als Zugang zu einer selbstbestimmten, multimodalen Kompetenzfeststellung für (aus-)bildungsbenachteiligte Jugendliche« (SeiP) serves as a practical reference. In it, the researchers developed instruments for a development-promoting skills assessment that does not focus on deficits, but rather makes strengths, abilities and potential visible. »Uncovering one’s own strengths is a challenging reflective skill«, says the Jena business educator. »The young people should take a close look at themselves and then draw self-confidence and security from what they have recognised.«

Orientation towards the lifeworld of young people

As part of SeiP, the researchers worked together with vocational schools and other educational institutions to develop formats that tie in with the students' everyday lives. For example, the young people analysed how they present themselves in a selfie on social media, how they express themselves in chats and voice messages and what role they play in everyday school life. They then presented the individual results in a creative way, for example through business sedcards, self-portraits, videos or other forms of artistic expression.

The concept, which centres on the needs of the young people and focuses on sustainable personal development, has been very well accepted by both pupils and teachers. The task now is to find out how the ideas can be integrated into schools in an uncomplicated and long-term manner. »The SeiP framework concept is a relatively open transfer object, as it does not provide a ready-made learning programme that can be implemented step by step. Each school can work out for itself what suits the given conditions and what focus it wants to set«, says Petra Frehe-Halliwell. »This great creative freedom helps to make the concept your own and anchor it in the school in the long term.«

First Gelsenkirchen, then Thuringia too

What other conditions need to be met, for example what hurdles may stand in the way and which stakeholders play what role—this is what the follow-up project now aims to find out. Initially, the researchers want to analyse the implementation at a vocational college in Gelsenkirchen and later at other institution units, for example in Thuringia. In addition, the researchers want to develop a study and further training concept, including corresponding materials, in order to integrate the content of the SeiP project into the initial and further training of teachers.