2008 volume 5 number 1

Editorial for the issue "Intercultural Education"

Yasemin Karakaşoğlu, Sonja Bandorski

This text gives a short overview of the articles on the topic "Intercultural Education" (bildungsforschung, issue 2008 volume 5 number 1).

Assessment of the cognitive developmental context of Turkish-German toddlers

Berrin Özlem Otyakmaz

According to Caldwell and Bradley, the developers of the HOME (Home Observation Measurement for Environment) Inventory, this measurement is one the worldwide mostly used instruments to assess the developmental context of infants and toddlers. Numerous studies, including those of Bradley and colleagues, have been concerned with the lack of criterion validity of the HOME Inventory in ethnic and minority groups in the USA. Referring to the predictive criterion validity it was found in a comparative study with Anglo-American, Afro-American and Mexican-American samples that the relationship between HOME scores and the cognitive developmental scores of the children was stronger in the Anglo-American sample than in the two other groups. It was assumed that a cultural bias underlying the item construction, and with this a lack of content validity, caused these criterion validity differences. Therefore Bradley and colleagues proposed to develop supplement items to the HOME Scale in order to detect culture specific aspects in the home environment of minority children. Following this suggestion the author composed culture specific supplement items for the assessment of the developmental context of Turkish-German toddlers in Germany with the aim to increase the criterion validity of the HOME by enhancing its content validity for this special group. In a validation study the original HOME items and the supplement items were applied to 36 Turkish immigrant families and 35 German families with infants at the age of twelve months. The results of the study suggest that an addition of supplement items can increase the criterion validity of the HOME Scale slightly but that a criterion oriented item selection of the original items is a more successful approach.

Intercultural Education in Schools: A new field of co-operation for immigrant organisations?

Matthias Otten

Schools in a pluralistic society are limited in their capacities to combine the complex demands of elementary school education and socialisation. With a rapid increase of all-day schooling in Germany, many schools depend on the support of external partners in the educational process, especially in the field of intercultural education. However, profound information about the realities of intercultural transformation of educational institutions is still lacking. An empirical study undertaken in Rheinland-Pfalz (Germany) explores the potential and willingness of schools to install intercultural education activities in close co-operation with immigrant organisations. Findings show that the majority of the schools consider intercultural education as important, but very few have yet established co-operations with external partners. The potential for intensifying co-operations is not yet exhausted.

Multicultural media competence as an answer to the role of the media in multicultural societies

Sigrid Luchtenberg

Results from studies about the German media discourse (TV and print media) on migration and multiculturalism will be presented in this contribution. This media discourse often differentiates between we and them in its language and its contents. We examine how intercultural media competence can lead to higher media awareness and a critical attitude.

Ethnic Identity, a resource for performance in education?

Sonja Bandorski

The article is based on a quantitative survey among 950 girls and young women aged 15 to 21 with a migration background living in Germany. Through a secondary analysis of the data the correlation of ethnic identity and performance in education was investigated. In the explorative empirical analyses ethnic identity was regarded and used as a multi-dimensional construct. This reveals simultaneity in orientations towards Germany and/or the home-country with different effects on the participation in education. Amongst others ethnic orientation could be identified as positive effects on performance in education.

Adolescent educational spaces under conditions of migration

Merle Hummrich

This article deals with female adolescent immigrants from the working-class and their strategies of using educational spaces. Not the question of belonging(s) or descent comes into the fore, but the structural risk of integration and its coping. The perspective of space-analysis shall provide a possibility to leave one sided aspects of chances or deficits of migration and look at active strategies of acting.

Interculturalism and recognition in Social Work

Ulrike Zöller

This article represents the results of a qualitative study based on intercultural experiences by apprentices’ multicultural origin and educational employees in the off-the-job training. It’s to elaborate that the question, how to gain recognition, plays a significant role in the analyzed qualitative data. The contention with recognition has an affect on the social action of both test groups. Also, data will be associated with Axel Honneth’s considerations.

Live and learn? The role of migrants in continuing education – the Austrian perspective

Annette Sprung

Migrants are less represented in continuing education than others, although their position at the job market implies that there is an increased need for education. The paper analyses the situation of adult migrants in relation to educational issues and the job market, causes for their low participation in education shall be discussed. The discussion of the topic in pedagogical research shall be reflected upon as well as the issues of migration and continuing education will be put into the context of life long learning.

Quality culture for a better education. Higher education on the way from a control culture to a quality culture

Ulf-Daniel Ehlers

In this article it is argued that quality development in higher education needs to go beyond the implementation of rules and processes for quality management purposes in order to improve the educational quality. Quality development rather has to focus on promoting a quality culture which is enabling individual actors to continuously improve their profession. While this understanding of quality as part of the organisational culture gains more importance there is still a lack of fundamental research and conceptual understanding of the phenomenon in itself. This article aims to lay the foundations for a comprehensive understanding of quality culture in organisations, focussing on higher education. For this purpose, the state-of-the-art in research about organisational culture is discussed and a model of quality culture is presented.