Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to link two modes of governance (transactional and transformational) to organizational learning by examining the example of academic teaching. Consequently, the "transformational" strategies of best practices that have been used by German universities to achieve teaching excellence are interpreted as…

Purpose: In Germany, principals' working environments are data-rich for school improvement purposes in a rather low-stakes test-regime. An effective use of externally as well as internally generated data, also known as data wise leadership, is considered to be a key competence of successful principals. The purpose of this paper is to describe data…

The success of an application programming interface (API) crucially depends on how well its documentation meets the information needs of software developers. Previous research suggests that these information needs have not been sufficiently understood. This article presents the results of a series of semistructured interviews and a follow-up…

Modularisation of vocational training courses is a major issue across many European countries. Germany has been slow to implement modularisation in its VET system: the prevailing view of modular concepts in the country is one of great scepticism, but there is very little empirical data to inform the debate. This exploratory study focuses on the…

Approximately one million international students were enrolled at U.S. universities in the academic year 2015-2016, and the number has been steadily rising since. Although these students aim to increase intercultural communication skills, international knowledge, and critical thinking skills, some international students experience difficulty…

This paper links two strands of literature (collective learning and resilience) by looking at experiences with collective learning as precondition of regional economic resilience. Based on a qualitative empirical study, the emergence of collective learning structures in the Stuttgart region after a macroeconomic and structural crisis at the…

This research project was conducted to explore parental attitudes towards and their mediation of video games. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 28 parents (14 couples) assessed their media-related habitus, their media-educational habitus and the interaction between the habitus. The results show that the media-related habitus has a…

As digital technologies develop and change, so do the ways these tools are integrated into classrooms. In particular, as mobile digital technologies become ubiquitous there is a need to investigate how teachers engage with these tools--both personally and professionally. Research has consistently shown that teachers' underlying beliefs and…

Career paths, career development and participation in adult learning are to a large extent dependent on learning experiences and labour-market entrance in early life stages. However, within the group of people with relative weak educational and vocational background variance was found in terms of how people perceive their situation and how they…

The Erasmus+ TeCoLa project (2016-2019) aims to develop and test innovative gamified telecollaboration approaches for secondary schools that address issues of learning diversity in intercultural and Content Integrated Language Learning (CLIL) and teaching. Authentic task-based transnational interactions among peers from different socio-cultural,…

Personal epistemological beliefs are considered to play an important role for processes of learning and teaching. However, research on personal epistemology is confronted with theoretical issues as there is conflicting evidence regarding the structure, stability, and context-dependence of epistemological beliefs. We give evidence how theoretical…

The transfer of vocational education and training (VET) systems is currently the subject of lively international debate, but there has so far been very little documentation of the process or analysis of how such transfers are achieved in practical terms. This paper therefore considers the potential for transferring Germany's "dual"…

Individuals who pass through low-skilled work in their careers can represent this phase as showing strength of character as obstacles are overcome. However, continuing to work in low-skilled employment has so many negative consequences that finding ways to assist those individuals' career development is an important challenge for guidance policy…

This study seeks an understanding of how tutors perceived the online part of a blended learning course in the context of teaching English as a foreign language at a German university. To gain knowledge about the ways in which the tutors experienced the phenomenon, a phenomenographic methodological framework was employed. Identified were four…

The increasing number of migrants and refugees arriving in Europe places new demands on European education systems. In this context, the role that free digital learning (FDL) could play in fostering inclusion has attracted renewed interest. While the existing literature highlights some general design principles for developing FDL for migrants and…