Dr. Sina Fackler, Dr. Ilka Wolter, Kathrin Thums, and Dr. Götz Lechner at the LIfBi information booth.  

Kathrin Thums, Research Assistant in the LIfBi Junior Research Group "Gender Roles and Competences Across the Life Course” presented part of her doctoral thesis based on data from a preliminary study by the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) at the pre-conference JURE (Junior Researchers of EARLI). She examines the question of whether gender-stereotypical text content in a competence test for measuring reading literacy is relevant for the reading literacy of women and men. With her analyses she can illustrate that these specific text characteristics do not explain differences in reading skills.

At the EARLI main conference LIfBi employees were represented in several sessions: Dr. Sina Fackler, Research Assistant in the LIfBi research unit "Competencies", presented her intercultural comparative work between Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, and South- and South-East Asian country groups. She examines how the self-efficacy of teachers in terms of their instructional skills, their active involvement of students in the classroom, and their class management are influenced by various factors—that may include either the person itself, the class, school administration, or school environment. For her research, she analyses data from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). Differences could be attributed to value attitudes in the country groups, which are differently pronounced there, such as flat versus hierarchical structures, attitudes toward gender equality, or the pursuit of success. For example, school-administration factors have proved to be more important in South- and South-East Asian countries, which tend to have a big hierarchy divide, than in Scandinavian countries, where the hierarchical divide is rather small. Thus, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of how the cultural environment shapes the experience of school situations.

Sebastian Franz, Research Assistant at the Panel of Teacher Education Students (Lehramtsstudierendenpanel, LAP), presented his work with data from Starting Cohort 5–First-Year Students in Higher Education–of the National Educational Panel Study in a poster presentation: He examines the factors influencing dropout from teaching degrees.

Dr. Ilka Wolter, Head of the LIfBi Department "Competencies, Personality, Learning Environments", presented a joint collaboration with LIfBi Director Prof. Dr. Cordula Artelt, which is based on the data of a NEPS preliminary study, in which an experimental design for different test conditions in the measurement of reading literacy was implemented. In their study, they investigated whether study participants react to different navigation conditions in reading literacy testing by applying different strategies. For this purpose, they analyzed process data from computer-based testing. Their results show that especially good readers adapt their strategies to the test environment.

Throughout the entire conference, interested researchers were able to learn more about the diverse data sets of the NEPS and other studies of the LIfBi at the LIfBi information booth.
This year's conference, which takes place every two years, attracted around 2,300 visitors. EARLI is one of the world's most respected and important scientific societies in educational research.

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