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Abitur exam in Rostock (archive picture): "Sometimes a lot of time was lost as a result of the alternate classes, since everything was often taught twice"
Photo: Bernd Wüstneck / DPA
Schoolchildren who have graduated from high school in the past few weeks perceived the recent school years with the corona-related restrictions very ambiguously.
Above all, they critically rate the lack of concepts for everyday teaching and the qualifications of teachers for online teaching.
This emerges from the results of a nationwide survey.
Researchers from the University of Paderborn asked around 7,500 schoolchildren about the stress they experienced in Corona lessons.
"Our main concern was the emotional experience of the Abitur in this special situation," says Tim Rogge from the Paderborn working group for general didactics, school pedagogy and media pedagogy.
The main results:
Nationwide there were big differences in
how schools dealt with the crisis
.
“While some high school graduates report that they were taught face-to-face throughout the last school year, the majority of those surveyed spent parts of the school year in distance or alternating lessons,” the researchers write.
The phases of
alternating lessons
were more stressful for the young people than phases in which the whole class learned in distance lessons. "The distance teaching was not a big problem," said one student in the survey: "But sometimes a lot of time was lost due to the alternating teaching, since everything was often taught twice, namely once for each half of the course."
The
pupils rate the
media literacy of the teachers
rather poorly: Only 15.1 percent of the respondents agreed with the statement that the teachers "mostly have sufficiently good media skills for distance teaching". 28.9 percent expressly disagreed with this assessment. However, the researchers discovered an interesting connection: "The higher the graduates rate the media skills of their teachers, the better the final grades they give," says the study.
61.2 percent of high school graduates also welcome the fact that the
final exams
were carried out regularly
despite the pandemic
.
In 2020, the value was 53.4 percent.
The majority, however, is skeptical of the alternative suggestion, which has meanwhile been discussed, to average grades instead of the exams.
The background is "the concern that a› Corona Abitur ‹without Abitur exams could be viewed as inferior compared to previous Abitur classes and, for example, be disadvantaged in applications," says Tim Rogge.
The study
Expand areaWho carried out the examination?
Tim Rogge is an education scientist, Andreas Seifert is a psychologist at the University of Paderborn.
In the summer of 2020, they asked high school graduates about their experience of the Abitur examination phase under corona conditions and have now repeated this study.
The cooperation partner was the app provider Abihome.
AreaWhich data was collected? Expand
The survey was carried out among high school graduates across Germany in June.
More than 7,500 young people took part.
Area How meaningful are the results? Expand
The authors emphasize that their study is not representative.
Nonetheless, the large number of participating students allows conclusions to be drawn about important topics and trends.
"So far, studies on the perspective of high school students have only been available sporadically and with small sample sizes," says Rogge.
The investigation will be expanded again from August to include in-depth interviews with high school graduates.
Then topics should also be taken up that emerge as trends in the results.
This includes the fact that girls and boys perceived the stress differently: For example, high school graduates spent significantly more time studying distance learning with an average of 3.73 hours per day than high school graduates with 2.84 hours.
Resignation requests for ministers
The greatest stress was experienced by schoolgirls with a migration background and the low level of education of their parents.
"On the other hand, women report better final grades than their male classmates, which suggests that female pupils were better able to motivate and organize themselves in distance learning than pupils," says Andreas Seifert from the working group for educational psychology and developmental psychology.
more on the subject
Markus Söder about school and Corona: "When I came into the room, it was said: Please go outside" An interview by Jan Friedmann and Simone Salden
The researchers were surprised by the clear political assessment of school policy in the pandemic.
When asked about satisfaction with the educational policy decisions in the respective federal state, around 70 percent said they were "dissatisfied" or "somewhat dissatisfied".
This dissatisfaction was particularly evident in the open-ended responses: "The resignation of school ministers in the federal states is frequently demanded and political decision-makers are accused of breaching trust in view of the promised simplification of the Abitur examinations," says the summary of the study.
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