Future trends in school education: secondary schools sought as cooperation partners
2025-04-23 Promoting democracy and sustainability in schools and classrooms
Lüneburg. In the "Future Trends in Education" project, researchers from Leuphana University of Lüneburg are working with colleagues from the universities of Oldenburg and Osnabrück and secondary schools in Lower Saxony to promote democracy education and education for sustainable development. To this end, findings will be systematically collected to show whether and how schools are succeeding in promoting the relevant skills. The project offers support to schools in implementing their concepts and provides a network for exchange with other schools and experts. The five-year project began in January 2025.
Specifically, the researchers are inviting 40 secondary schools from the regional school districts of Lüneburg and Osnabrück to collaborate and participate in surveys and measurements. Together with the non-profit organization Zukunft.Lernen, different types of schools from different regions will be examined, including rural schools, which otherwise rarely receive scientific support. Participating schools will receive the results of annual measurements, including individual feedback on various skills, as well as information on what is going well and advice on what can be improved and how. Interested school administrators can now register at FutureEd@leuphana.de.
Prof. Dr. Marcus Pietsch from Leuphana is also part of the project management team. He explains: "Among other things, we want to find out what schools are actually doing to help students learn to stand up for democracy and actively shape it. Based on the data collected, our expertise, and the expertise of the people on the ground, we identify what works and thus generate data-driven insights. We can then put these insights back into practice and thereby generate a social impact."
Prof. Dr. Michael Koß, political scientist at Leuphana, emphasizes the importance of promoting democracy in light of the current political situation in Germany: "Political education should raise awareness that understanding the processes of German democracy cannot be limited to a glance at the (Basic) Law, but must make the complexity of political action comprehensible." According to the scientist, the aim is to enable students to contribute their expectations, convictions, and dissatisfaction to our democracy in a productive way.
The collaboration between the three universities, led by Leuphana, aims to raise their (inter)national profile in the field of educational transformation research. Its focus is on data-based analysis of school change processes in the face of societal and social change.
Background
The project is funded with almost €3 million as part of the "Science Spaces" program of the State of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation. The funding initiative aims to enable universities to strategically develop their locations as part of Lower Saxony's high-performance science system in the coming years by collaborating in science spaces.