Current Projects
• TRANSBIEL – Transnationale Bildungsunternehmen im Elementarbereich/Transnational Edupreneurs in ECEC
This project analyses marketisation tendencies in the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC), focusing on transnational for-profit providers. Commercial providers are a relatively new type of ECEC providers in Germany, but in view of the existing shortage of daycare places and the continuing high demand for childcare, they are likely to become even more important in the future. The project investigates this phenomenon from three perspectives:
First, it analyses the impact on the existing landscape of ECEC providers in Germany, their potential effects on the establishment of quasi-markets (analogous to the school sector) and questions of unequal access to high-quality day care. A network analyses of for-profit providers and their transnational activities aims to show the interconnectedness of these edupreneurs and how they operate in the respective national contexts. Context-specific (market) adaptation strategies can be analysed as well as cross-context understandings of education and upbringing in early childhood. Secondly, the project is interested in the discoursive shifts regarding basic pedagogical ideas and quality criteria of ECEC facilities using self-representations of the edupreneurs under study. Thirdly, the project focuses on the increasingly important role of for-profit providers in terms of training and further education of pedagogical staff.
• Childhood memories of Cold War times and beyond: between connections and divisions
Co-organiser of the satellite conference, 20-22 October 2021, Auditorium Grimm-Zentrum, HU Berlin
Further information: https://events.tuni.fi/recollectreconnect2021/berlin-hub/
Submissions are still possible until May 1st, 2021 at: https://events.tuni.fi/recollectreconnect2021/abstract-submission/
• Re-Connect / Re-Collect: Cold War Experiences of Childhood
https://coldwarchildhoods.org/re-connect-re-collect/
Member of the research network around the initiators Zsuzsa Millei (Professor of Early Childhood Education, Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University, Finland), Nelli Piattoeva (Associate Professor, New Social Research Institute and Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University, Finland) and Iveta Silova (Professor and Director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Global Education at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA)
Completed Projects
Own Projects
• Teacher’s justice beliefs in regarding assessment. A comparative grounded theory study with teachers in Germany and Sweden
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-28275-2
Dissertation project (2011-2017)
This qualitative-reconstructive study focused on teacher’s beliefs regarding fair assessment, precisely what would be considered as “fair assessment” in their point of view. Methodologically framed by Grounded Theory and Comparative Education, the fairness beliefs of North Rhine-Westphalian and Swedish teachers were comparatively investigated. The analysis culminated into a typology of four justice beliefs – mathematical-calculative, procedural-bureaucratic, discursive-interactive and compensatory justice beliefs – that was developed from three types of material: 1) legal documents, curricula etc., 2) episodic interviews with secondary school teachers, 3) teacher’s own assessment material. The developed typology of justice beliefs is proposed as a heuristic for further empirical justice research in the area of assessment in school.
Collaboration in projects
• Different worlds of meritocracy? Educational assessment and conceptions of justice in Germany, Sweden and England in the age of ‘standards-based reform’
DFG project, Emmy Noether Junior Research Group led by Prof. Dr. Florian Waldow (WA 2889/1-1, duration 2010-2017)