Evaluation of the Transfer Project Schools Take Responsibility - Educational Pathways of Learners

The program Schulen übernehmen Verantwortung - Bildungswege der Lernenden (Schools Take Responsibility - Educational Pathways of Learners) was launched in 2011 by the Brandenburg Gate Foundation in cooperation with the Berlin Senate Department for Education, Youth and Family Affairs as a transfer of the project Schulen übernehmen Verantwortung (Schools Take Responsibility, 2006-2010). The project Schulen übernehmen Verantwortung (Schools Take Responsibility) put responsibility as a guiding idea at the center of the cooperation between two-school networks (tandems). In a systematic process of cooperation, a total of 21 school tandems set content priorities in the areas of student learning, shaping transitions, school management and teacher learning, developed concrete measures and put them into practice.

The transfer program Schulen übernehmen Verantwortung - Bildungswege der Lernenden (Schools Take Responsibility - Educational Pathways of Learners) aimed to transfer the systematics of network support and cooperation procedures to the regional training department of the Berlin Senate Department for Education, Youth and Family over the course of two years (2011-2012). The cooperation of twelve school networks, each is accompanied by a school development consultant, focuses on the transition between the providing primary and the continuing secondary school. So the program has a relevant intersection with the objectives of the school reform implemented in Berlin at the beginning of the 2010/11 school year: here, too, the declared aim is to create coherence in the educational pathways of children and young people through a coordinated transition and binding cooperation between the different types of schools. The evaluation study was conducted at the Department of Empirical Educational Research at the University of Kassel. The formative (accompanying) evaluation was designed to summarize the transfer project from an external perspective. Specifically, three objectives were pursued, which could be realized by means of different research questions:

(1) To make statements about the course of the transfer project in the participating schools.

(2) To make statements about the status of the transfer of the cooperation procedures previously implemented in the project Schools Take Responsibility into the regional further education of Berlin.

(3) To develop and provide indicators that can be used in future studies to measure the successful transfer of the project Schulen übernehmen Verantwortung.

The external evaluation study was designed qualitatively. The data collection methods used were (a) document analyses, (b) focused interviews with school administrators and teachers from four selected school networks and with school development consultants from four Berlin regions, and (3) participant observation of the kick-off event in 2012. The study began in early 2012, approximately one year after the start of the transfer program. An evaluation report was submitted in December 2012.