Quality development in mathematics education by focussing on the outcome: new answers or new questions?

Abstract

1. The paradigm shift: from input to outcome At present the German education system undergoes a drastic change, introducing new steering instruments which are expected to influence teaching practice considerably. As a consequence of the mediocre results of German students in international large scale assessment studies the governments of the sixteen Federal States unanimously decreed that quality improvement of schools should henceforth be steered by the “outcome” instead of the “input” (cf. article by Blum et al. in this issue). The education system has for a long time nurtured the false hope that quality could be achieved and secured by making detailed prescriptions with regard to teachers’ education, by equipping schools and by defining the obligatory content in great detail. After seeing that this approach has not proven sufficiently successful, the new hope grows that quality improvement is better reached by defining expected competencies and by assessing them centrally. In central guidelines that appear radically narrow teachers and schools receive increased responsibility. Since this steering system combines central and decentral strategies it is often referred to as “integrated quality management” (Rolff 2004). The change we just outlined is the most fundamental reform in Germany since the education reform at the end of the 1960s or even since the restoration of the diversified school system after the Second World War (cf. Baumert, Cortina & Leschinsky 2003). The enormous speed and the wide extent of the recently initiated change can be better understood when seen in the historical context: