Evidence-Based Learning at School

Ministerial Service Center for Secondary Modern Schools of Upper Bavaria West

The Ministerial Service Center for  Secondary Modern Schools of Upper Bavaria West csm_MB_Logo_2_6f6ab10bd3(“Die Dienststelle des Ministerialbeauftragten”) is a kind of board of further education for secondary modern schools and supervises one of eight districts in Bavaria. Our district is called “Upper Bavaria West”. Our office is at Fürstenfeldbruck, a town near Munich. Mr. Ernst Fischer, head of the district, and his staff support and supervise 80 schools in many ways, including about 3.500 teachers and 45.000 pupils. The “Staatliche Realschule Geisenfeld” is one of our secondary modern schools.

Besides a lot of tasks some of the main aims in education are: quality assurance, quality improvement, continuous development, coordination of arrangements and meetings between our schools, organization und realization of further training courses for teachers and basic and advanced specialized trainings, cooperation between our “Dienststelle”, schools and universities ( e. g. “Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich” and “ Catholic University of Ingolstadt-Eichstätt”), consulting service (e.g. for parents, students, pupils etc.).

Education being a challenging and dynamic process, the improving of the quality of teaching and learning is considered top priority. To achieve these aims we were highly interested in getting the chance of working on a German-Swedish project which targets at an evidence-based educational approach.

In detail the Ministerial Service Center defined its role within the project as follows:

  • Overall coordination of the project.
  • Coordination of the Bavarian partners by continuous monitoring of the project, especially with regards to contents.
  • The Ministerialbeauftragte provided for personnel as well as organisational resources to carry out the project, especially for project meetings in Germany.
  • Leading role in publication and dissemination of the project results mainly in Bavaria, but also in a national scope. This was realised by publishing the results of the project in English and German in the form of a brochure and on the internet (mainly by integrating in existing sites concerning media education). The results will further be disseminated in in-service teachers trainings, presentations at conferences and symposia and in official bulletins, teachers’ magazines etc.