Accompanying Jena schools on the path to inclusion (Project GU)

The research and development project is conceptually linked to the "Expertise on Common Education in the City of Jena" (2011 - 2014), which took stock of the quality of common education in the municipality. The school portraits developed in the context of this expertise and coordinated with the schools are the basis for an inclusive school development process at the level of the individual school. Here it is of particular interest how expertise and professional competence for teaching in heterogeneous learning groups can be differentiated in the context of the previous state of development of the respective individual school. Support and guidance for individual schools will be particularly related to the structuring of learning environments, time, and relationships between children, youth, and adults. 

In the context of a diverse school landscape, joint teaching (GU) of children and adolescents with and without special educational needs has become established in Jena over the past 15 years. Jena has an above-average integration rate of 70 percent, both in comparison with the urban and rural districts of Thuringia and in a national comparison.

The city of Jena as a school authority is interested in obtaining data-based information on the quality of GU with scientific support and has therefore commissioned the expertise, which is being developed in cooperation between the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena and the Humboldt University of Berlin.

The aim of the project is to provide an overall description of the quality of common education in the community and to examine the system of professional cooperation and networking in relation to GU. For this purpose, following an ecosystemic research approach, the perspectives of all actors involved are recorded and examined in their mutual relations: on the administrative level, the State Education Authority and the Municipality of Jena as school authorities; on the level of the individual schools, school principals, teachers, special education teachers, school social workers, integration assistants, parents and students are interviewed. In the first step of the study, we obtain qualitative data with the help of guided interviews; in the second step, questionnaires are used to generate quantitative data. In addition, classroom observations in classes with GU are planned. The client, the city of Jena, wants to use the gained knowledge as steering knowledge for the further development of GU and the design of the framework conditions. Furthermore, we consider Jena as a model municipality in which theoretical considerations on the conditions for the success of GU can be empirically tested.