Reunification of East and West German School Systems and the Big Fish Little Pond Effect on Academic Self-Concept. German Reunification and Self-Concept [electronic resource] / Herbert W. Marsh, Olaf Koller and Jurgen Baumert.
This paper examines the educational results of the reunification of East and West Germany. Specifically, it discusses what happened to students' self-concept when the East German system, which was highly standardized, was combined with the West German schools, which were highly differentiated a...
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| Format: | Electronic eBook |
| Language: | English |
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2000.
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| Summary: | This paper examines the educational results of the reunification of East and West Germany. Specifically, it discusses what happened to students' self-concept when the East German system, which was highly standardized, was combined with the West German schools, which were highly differentiated and based on achievement. To study this result, longitudinal data from large cohorts of seventh grade (n=2,778) East and West German students were collected at the start of reunification of the school systems. The prior East German school system was largely transformed into the existing West German system. Multilevel modeling demonstrated the "big fish little pond" effect was more prevalent for West German students than for East German students; that is, students who attended classes where class-average math achievement was higher led to lower math self-concepts. But the difference was smaller by the middle of the year and had disappeared by the end of the first school year after reunification. However, East German students had significantly lower academic self-concepts than did their West German counterparts. The results demonstrate how systemwide educational policies can affect the academic self-concepts of individual students. (Contains 22 references.) (RJM) |
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| Item Description: | ERIC Document Number: ED451589. Sponsoring Agency: Western Sydney Univ., Macarthur (Australia). Sponsoring Agency: Max-Planck-Institut fuer Bildungsforschung, Berlin (West Germany). Sponsoring Agency: Australian Research Council. ERIC Note: Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (New Orleans, LA, April 24-28, 2000). Paper is part of symposium sponsored by the SELF Research Centre. Sponsoring institutions funded this research through a special investigator grant. |
| Physical Description: | 16 pages. |