Publikationen

We found that (a) student evaluation of teaching (SET) is present cross-nationally; (b) SET was initiated in the US during the 1950s by students and adopted in the 1970s by universities, while German and Colombian universities started implementing SET during the 2000s; and that (c) common cultural elements for adopting SET include increasing accountability, competition and student empowerment. Concerns for academic freedom in Germany and faculty diversity in the US influence SET’s diffusion and implementation. Our findings test the neo-institutional proposition about the diffusion of similar evaluation practices into university teaching and allows extending theoretical interpretations of the transfer of evaluation practices.

The article examines the development of university governance in Germany after 1945, distinguishing between the ordinariate and the group university as well as the university under the paradigm of the new governance model as stages of development. As a supplement to the classical periodization for West Germany, important aspects of the development of higher education in the GDR are addressed. The study is guided by the governance approach with its distinction of five central governance mechanisms based on the so-called "governance equalizer" (Schimank). The article concludes with an outlook on currently discussed perspectives of higher education development in Germany.

Through content analysis of policy documents, we seek to find out why the Colombian Congress established peace education (PE) as mandatory content across all educational levels in 2014 in a postwar phase, while the German Standing Conference of Ministers of Education rejected attempts to implement PE since the Cold War. Whereas the German school curriculum has maintained a strong disciplinary structure that leads to the rejection of the local version of PE developed in the Federal Republic of Germany, either as military indoctrination or critical pedagogy, Colombia’s curriculum based on classical education is now influenced by educational bstandards and citizenship education—both influences from the United States.

Numerous benefits have been associated with study-related experiences abroad such as employability, wage gains, and soft-skills. Thus, the topic of international student mobility is closely connected to issues of equity and access to higher education. This chapter places special emphasis on differences in mobility rates by gender, field of study, and type of higher education institution. Eurostudent data is used to analyse credit-seeking enrolment and it is distinguished between mobility organised in the realm of programmes and independently organised short-term mobility phases. The mobility patterns of students in Eurostudent countries are quite varied with regard to the extent and types of mobility undertaken.

Based on our interviews with professors and administrators at 18 universities in three countries, we discuss how SET diffused in all the studied universities and how SET was translated and edited differently according to different sets of statements. SET diffused from the US, where it was initiated by students in the 1950s and later adopted by universities in the 1970s. German and Colombian universities only imported SET later, in the 2000s, and in the German public sector it is still not mandatory for all courses. SET gains legitimacy through different discourses, for instance, the discourse on the empowerment and rights of students. SET also connects to the discourse on increasing rationality that extends to the metrification of teaching.