Bernhard Streitwieser

Assessment Beyond Performance Phenomenography in Educational Evaluation

Increasing calls for accountability in education have promoted improvements in quantitative evaluation approaches that measure student performance; however, this has often been to the detriment of qualitative approaches, reducing the richness of educational evaluation as an enterprise. In this article the authors assert that it is not merely performance but also how learners think and how their thinking changes that we should be measuring in educational program evaluation. They describe a mixed-methods evaluation model based on the qualitative method phenomenography that can be used to evaluate how learners think in multiple contexts, from skills training to employee development to higher education, and how their thinking may change over time. They then describe two evaluation studies making use of this approach and provide suggestions for evaluators interested in using the phenomenographic model.

Small-Group Learning in Undergraduate STEM Disciplines: Effect of Group Type on Student Achievement.

Small-group learning in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines has been widely studied, and it is clear that this method offers many benefits to students. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which small learning groups differ from one another, and how these differences may affect student learning and experiential outcomes. This study uses a previously validated instrument to categorize, or type, small peer-led STEM learning groups, and then to investigate the impact of group characteristics on student outcomes. Six hundred and forty-six students were observed over 2 academic quarters. During the fall quarter, no relationship was found between group type and student course grade. During the winter quarter, statistically significant differences in student grade were found among group types. We posit that group type may not make a difference in grade early in the year because the groups are not yet functioning optimally, so that group “noise”, such as facilitator inexperience or student discomfort, may drown out the effects of group type on student performance.

Entering the Community of Practitioners: A Science Research Workshop Model

Bernhard Streitwieser is a senior research associate at Northwestern University’s Searle Center for Teaching Excellence, a teaching associate in the School of Education and Social Policy, and a former lecturer in the German department. Greg Light is the director of the Searle Center and an associate professor in the School of Education and Social Policy. He has taught postgraduate courses in higher and professional education and consulted across the higher and professional education sector in the UK, the US, and Canada. Pilar Pazos is an assistant professor in the Department of Engineering Management & Systems Engineering at Old Dominion University. Previously she held a joint position at Northwestern’s Searle Center and the VaNTH (Vanderbilt, Northeastern, Texas, Harvard/MIT) Engineering Research Center.

The Grand Promise of Global Citizenship Through Study Abroad

Today we live in an age of mass marketing and educational commerce where international education has become a big business, full of promise and reward. It is not surprising that in this spirit many colleges, universities and third party providers that promote study abroad characterize it as essentially guaranteeing “Global Citizenship,” a very attractive credential to students and parents alike.

The Potential and Reality of New Refugees Entering German Higher Education: The Case of Berlin Institutions.

By the close of 2015, roughly 890,000 new refugees had arrived in Germany, more than half fleeing the ongoing Syrian Civil War. While Germany had been accustomed to heavy migration streams since the end of the Second World War, the speed of the refugee influx was unexpected. Federal, state, and municipal governments and German civil society, including educational institutions, were largely unprepared and scrambled to respond. This article critically examines the efforts of three universities in Berlin to address the “refugee crisis,” with additional data from higher education experts at ministries, foundations, and institutes in Berlin and Bonn, Germany. The Campus Crisis Management framework developed by Zdziarski, Dunkel, and Rollo is used to critically investigate their response and its implications for Germany.

Research Partnership Over Neocolonialism: Max Planck Society Policy in Latin America

Theoretical approaches to North-South research partnerships have highlighted how they foster better capacity building and also come with embedded external cultural controls. An analysis of the German Max Planck Institutes’ work in Latin America illustrates how cooperation on the Northern side is promoted by well-defined programs, while on the Southern side is supported by governmental and university policies strengthening the academic environment and its international partnerships, particularly in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Colombia. However, while these collaborations give researchers from the global South greater access to a wider realm of international activity, the agendas within which they operate are still largely determined by Northern partners, which may exclude greater influence by Southern peers.

Inclusive Practices in Response to the German Refugee Influx: Support Structures and Rationales Described by University Administrators

The refugee influx to Germany has challenged institutions of higher education (HEI’s) to develop programs and policies that further support a diverse population of students. Building upon a small number of published works focusing on this highly dynamic environment, we present an analysis of two related studies focused on university administrators’ perceptions of approaches to refugee student support at their institutions. Data from interviews and analysis of programming indicate that attaining German language proficiency at the C1 level is a significant barrier for refugee students; that there are key differences in the types of programs offered in distinct university contexts, which may relate to the degree of university leadership or administrator background and interest; that the definition of “success” from the university perspective is often opaque and inconsistent; that managing refugees’ expectations is a challenge; that there is a desire to enable more Muslim refugee women university access; and that there are large gaps in the number of students interested in study and those actually enrolling in degree programs. This paper presents interview data and document analysis collected from twelve universities and suggests further areas for inquiry.

Information Sharing in the Age of Hyper-competition: Opening an International Branch Campus

44 Change • November/December 2017 Bernhard Streitwieser (streitwieser@gwu.edu) PhD, is an Assistant Professor of International Education at the George Washington University. His research looks at the internationalization of higher education, education abroad, and inequality. He is the author of Internationalization of Higher Education and Global Mobility (Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, 2014) and Scholar Practitioners in International Higher Education (Symposium Books, 2016).

Some Thoughts on Post-Reunification Pedagogical Adjustments

This paper emerged from research I conducted in June 1997 in former East Berlin. During this time I was given the opportunity to visit the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education to conduct research in Berlin. My principal goal during this time was very simple: to learn as much as possible about the experiences of East German teachers before, during, and after German reunification. The other goal was to develop a foundation of understanding about former East German teachers and their transformation experience in an attempt to prepare for conducting full-scale dissertation1 research on this topic in the following year (presently I am researching in Berlin, again as a guest at the Max Planck Institute2 and also under the patronage of an Alexander von Humboldt Federal Chancellor [Bundeskanzler] Fellowship). Through discussion on a wide range of topics covering a broad spectrum of time and experience, I hoped to learn about some important issues that these teachers today feel still must be re...