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By: Mark A. Ashwill
The Federal Republic of Germany has 16 states, each with its own ministry of education and distinctive set of political, religious, and cultural traditions. While Germany is a small and relatively homogeneous nation, its constitution guarantees the cultural sovereignty of each state. In contrast to the high degree of centralization that exists in some other industrialized countries, the responsibility for primary and secondary schooling in Germany rests with the state and district authorities. The federal role in education is limited mainly to the regulation of educational and training assistance, including vocational education, and the promotion of scientific research.
How do national standards signal to students, families, employers, and education authorities the degree of mastery expected of all students? For what grades are standards devised? Who or what agencies devise these standards? How precisely stated and explicit are the standards? How frequently are the standards changed? To begin to answer these questions in a German context, we need to examine the manner in which general recommendations and resolutions agreed upon at a national level are translated into policies and practices at a state level.
Most of the discussion about education standards in Germany has taken place not in the corridors of the federal government but in the plenary sessions of an organization called the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK). The KMK is an advisory body, which attempts to ensure national comparability through joint agreements. In the absence of a centralized national ministry of education in Germany, the KMK performs a national coordinating function for standards in education.
Founded in 1948, the KMK was created in direct response to the Nazi policy of Gleichschaltung, which was an attempt to rid the country of regional differences in education and other cultural areas (Eckstein & Noah 1993). The KMK was charged with overseeing the cultural policy of all states within a framework of cultural sovereignty guaranteed by the German constitution. The KMK provides a forum in which the individual states coordinate the structures, institutions, curricula, and school-leaving certificates of their primary, secondary, and higher education systems. The result is that Germany has developed a set of de facto national standards and guidelines that form the basis for a degree of comparability between states. The KMK resolutions become legally binding when they are promulgated in the form of state laws, decrees, and regulations.
Over the years, the KMK has addressed a number of important issues related to math and science instruction. A 1968 resolution presented a detailed justification for "modernizing" math instruction and a set of curricular guidelines encompassing grades 1 – 13 (Empfehlungen und Richtlinien zur Modernisierung des Mathematikunterrichts an den allgemeinbildenden Schulen 1968). The resolution represented an attempt to standardize math instruction by recommending specific learning objectives and suggesting a teaching methodology based on the work being carried out in other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. In spite of its age, the thematic outline for the fourth grade, for example, is remarkably similar to the framework curriculum currently being used in several states.
Examples of other resolutions related to math and science include "Improving Math and Science Instruction in the Gymnasien of the Federal Republic of Germany" (1970), "School Experiments As a Means of Improving Science Instruction" (1971), and "Recommendations and Guidelines for Math Instruction in the Elementary School" (1976). Each of these resolutions is the product of education research and a common desire to create a set of voluntary national standards in key subjects.
While all German states have basically the same education structure and core curriculum, abide by the uniform examination requirements for the Abitur (the school-leaving exam that follows attendance at a Gymnasium), and recognize school-completion credentials from around the country, there are differences in actual practice. For example, many aspects of schooling in the states of central and northern Germany differ markedly from those in the southern German states. Regional differences can also be detected in the states of the former East Germany. As in the rest of Germany, the education structures and priorities of these states reflect the political constellation of each state?s government. Accordingly, Brandenburg, which is governed by the Social
Democrats (SPD), has promoted the Gesamtschule (comprehensive school), while Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thüringen, where Christian Democrats are the majority party, have introduced middle schools (called Sekundarschulen or Mittelschulen) that combine Realschulen and Hauptschulen (Mitter & Weiss 1993).
These differences emerge as a result of state legislation and are implemented through the individual state?s Ministry of Education. It is the Ministry of Education that devises the curricula guidelines and communicates them to the districts and the schools.
As we will see throughout this volume, an examination of the development and implementation of education standards in 3 of Germany?s 16 states illustrates in dramatic fashion the challenge of establishing comparability in a nation that values regional cultural sovereignty over national uniformity. While this section has briefly outlined how recommendations and resolutions approved by the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK) filter down to the state level to become laws, rules and regulations, and curricular guidelines, we now turn to the development and implementation of the curriculum. How closely must teachers follow the officially prescribed curricular guidelines? How are students evaluated and promoted from one grade to the next? What do teachers, principals, students, and parents think about the curriculum and the issue of standards? These topics will be examined within the context of the elementary school, the lower secondary schools, the Gymnasium, and the vocational schools.
We conducted field research on education standards in German schools over a period of 3 months. The research consisted of interviews and conversations held with teachers, administrators, students, and parents, as well as observations in classrooms, elsewhere on school premises, and in everyday settings. All interviews were conducted in German, tape recorded, and later transcribed and translated into English for storage and analysis.
I conducted all of the interviews on the topic of standards at the primary site, as well as the observations pertaining to this topic, except for a few interviews at a vocational high school that were conducted by a German research assistant. I also joined Ute Milotich in collecting interview and observation data at the schools in East City, while William Foraker collected the interview and observation data relevant to the topic of standards during his visits to the schools in South City. William Foraker shared data from the secondary sites with me, and these were included in the analysis and reflected in this chapter.
On this topic, my colleagues and I conducted a total of 13 interviews at academic high schools, 17 at vocational high schools, 35 at middle schools, and 14 at elementary schools. Of the total number of interviews pertaining to this topic, approximately seven were held in East City and eight in South City. In addition, approximately 35 classroom and general observations were included in the data analysis. Printed information obtained from schools, career-counseling centers, state ministries of education and their affiliated research institutes, and the Conference of Ministers of Education was also integrated into research findings in this chapter.
[Chapter 2 (Part 2 of 5)]