Research and development projects at the professorship for Business Education
Currently various research and development projects are anchored within the professorship for Business Education. Focus areas are design of teaching and learning environments in business and economic education and their evaluation, the organisational modelling of educational organisations, especially in vocational schools and universities, and the development of study and educational programs. The projects can be assigned to the fields of higher education, vocational and operational education, and teacher training. At the same time, the perspectives of the individual projects must be viewed as connected.
The projects anchored within the professorship for Business Education are characterized by the connection of the creative process and the theory formation. The aim is to include the phenomena of vocational education and training practice, to provide theoretical grounding in order to empirically grasp the structures of social phenomena and to show design potential for vocational education.
Current projects
Foundations 4 Sector 3
The European third sector is a major economic sector with around 13 million full-time equivalent workers, in addition to 16 million volunteers. The European economy and much of our social and civic support relies heavily on a healthy sector that has the ability to attract and retain high quality talent. Many staff workers in the sector have short-term contracts, are poorly paid and have limited possibilities to upskill themselves. The ”Foundation 4 Sector 3” project (F4S3) addresses the need to combat staff turnover, burnout, and unclear pathways to career progression and mobility within the sector. F4S3 provides an entry-level induction programme for staff entering the third sector. This programme will be an introduction to the sector with an emphasis on personal development and core sector-specific skills. By using digital badges we can validate the skills gained by participants of the programme and allow them to be used for both personal development and career progression. By the end of the project a transfer plan will be devised to ensure that the material can be utilised post project. The programme will be delivered in all partner countries by the local partner and in the local language. The programme will use a blended learning approach with both face-to-face learning augmented by online learning. The training will be learner focused with training needs analysis conducted in advance of their training. The benefits of the project will be threefold. First, it will make the participants more confident and effective at their jobs in third-sector organisations and give them validated skills which will support them in their career progression. Second, it will help the third sector organisations by assisting in the induction process of new staff members and wellbeing at work. Third, the materials produced by F4S3 will be made available across Europe post project. The Foundation 4 Sector 3 project (2020 - 2022) is funded by the Erasmus+ programme. Outputs and timetable:
Partners:
| Assignment: Scientific management: Operational management: Sponsors: Funding period: |
Completed projects
ERASMUS+ Projekt Destination eValidation (DesTeVa)
| The DesTeVa project deals with the situation of 'volunteers' whose activities should also be insitutionally recognized and valued accordingly. Many of these dedicated people who work more or less in secret and often can not even understand whether and what this activity means for themselves and what skills they develop in the context of the activity. The goal of the DesTeVa is the documentation and validation of skills acquired in voluntary work. It is about the development of a Europe-wide online-based validation tool. The development is carried out in cooperation with different partner countries: Bulgaria, Finland, Great Britain, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Turkey. At the end of the project, an online tool will be available to give volunteers in different countries the opportunity to validate and disseminate their skills. In addition, a fit of the online tool with the respective national qualifications framework is to be established. | Assignment: Scientific research: Operational management: Sponsors: Funding period: |
Service Learning in Business and Economics
Service Learning is a teaching-learning format that combines curricular content with charitable engagement. Students provide support with their acquired skills regional charitable organisations for their specific problems. In addition to the professional and methodical development of competences, a contribution to the personal development of the students should be made. While this approach has already been widely anchored and explorer in the US, Service Learning is still comparatively a less theoretical and empirically based phenomenon for the German-speaking area. The goal of the project is to provide a theoretical and empirical grounding for service learning in the domain of Business and Economics. The project is based on a design research approach, developing context-sensitive prototypes for the implementation of Service Learning in Business and Economics and contributing to the development of theory in higher education teaching-learning research through scientific foundations and evaluation. Selected literature:Gerholz, K.-H., Liszt, V. & Klingsieck, K. (2017). Effects of learning design patterns in service learning courses. Active Learning in Higher Education. DOI: 10.1177/1469787417721420
| Assignment: Scientific management: Sponsors: Funding period: |
Campus Community Partnerships
Didactic formats like Service Learning, Community Service or Community Outreach include civil society as a place of learning in the design of institutional education processes (e.g. higher education, vocational education). From a didactic perspective, questions arise as which methods can be used to adequately shape learning processes with and in civil society. On the curricular-organizational level, it is about the structures and processes of the interaction between the learning venues educational organization and civil society. In the project, these structures and processes are explored in the sense of civil society education networks. | Assignment: Scientific management: Sponsors: Funding period:
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Elements of practice in teacher education - Germany and China
The professionalization of teacher students is in many countries a highly discussed phenomenon. Above all, often the implementation of practical elements and their contribution on student’ development is a current question in research of teacher education. Nevertheless, the traditional ‘application-of-theory’ model seems not effective and more reflective model like Schöns’ concept of the reflective practitioner seems more useful to explore the contribution of practical elements. Especially, the interplay of practical experiences and their theoretical reflection. In cooperation with the Tongji University (Prof. Dr. Jiping Wang, Chinese-German institute for vocational research) we work on the question of the connection of theory and practice in vocational teacher education in a comparative and empirical perspective. Selected literature:
| Assignment: Scientific research: Operational management: Running time: Sponsors: |
Scientific support leadership development of Caritas Association for the Archdiocese of Bamberg
| Caritas in the Archdiocese of Bamberg launched a comprehensive executive development program in 2016, which is designed to run for three years. As part of the scientific monitoring, the effects of leadership development on the management culture are examined as a longitudinal study. On the other hand, the measures are evaluated in order to make appropriate adjustments in the process. The scientific monitoring is carried out methodically in the form of a mixed methods approach. | Assignment: Scientific management: Operational management: Running time: Sponsors: |
Longitudinal study on the use of tablets in vocational education
In the 2017/2018 school year, the professorship for Business Education will explore the use of tablets in vocational education under the scientific direction of Professor Karl-Heinz Gerholz and Markus Dormann. The focus is on the didactic integration of tablets for the simulation of action requirements in digitalized work and business processes. The cooperation project with the State Vocational School 2 Aschaffenburg will analyze the effects and efficiencies of tablet classes based on a longitudinal study. The State Vocational School 2 with its developed and implemented media concept is a finalist in the i.s.i-competition and consequently the optimal school partner to scientifically accompany and evaluate digital teaching approaches. In addition, with the project manager, teacher StD Matthias Fünffinger, there is also an experienced media expert on the school side. The financial and technical realisation was made possible by Goran Hauser from the Institute for Transformation and Innovation.
| Assignment: Vocational education Markus Dormann Operational management: Dipl.-Hdl., Dipl.-Soz.Markus Dormann |