Page 1 A Brief Profile of the National Educational Panel Study "A national lighthouse casting its beam over international waters" is how the German Minister for Education and Research, Dr. Annette Schavan, described the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) at the opening ceremony in the auditorium of the University of Bamberg on February 3, 2009. Headed by Professor Dr. rer. pol. Dr. h. c. Hans-Peter Blossfeld, the NEPS cluster of excellence is studying educational processes and competence development from infancy to retirement age. The project has been evaluated scientifically by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG), and is receiving both federal and state government support. It is being financed by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (Federal Ministry of Education and Research, BMBF). In modern knowledge societies, education is the decisive precondition for not only participation in democracy but also economic growth and prosperity. The increasingly rapid changes in a globalized world make it necessary to cope with new challenges in both private and working life. The NEPS is currently being set up to face these challenges by finding out more about the acquisition of education in Germany, plotting the consequences of education for individual biographies, and describing as well as analyzing central education processes and trajectories across the entire lifespan. Germany's Federal Ministry for Education and Research initiated this interdisciplinary consortium combining the specific expertise of research institutes, researcher groups, and research personalities (see Figure 1) under the management of Professor Hans-Peter Blossfeld. The NEPS is located in the Institut für Bildungswissenschaftliche Längschnittforschung (Institute for Longitudinal Educational Research, INBIL) at the University of Bamberg. Because of their highly relevant experience, the following institutes have a particularly strong involvement in the NEPS: the Deutsche Institut für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung (German Institute for International Educational Research, DIPF) in Frankfurt, the Deutsche Jugendinstitut (German Youth Institute, DJI) in Munich, the Hochschul-Informations-System (Higher Education Information System, HIS) in Hannover, the Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (Institute for Employment Research, IAB) in Nuremberg, the Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung (Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training, BIBB) in Bonn, the Staatsinstitut für Familienforschung (State Institute for Family Research, ifb) in Bamberg, the European forum for migration studies (efms) in Bamberg, the Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (Institute for Economic Research, ifo) in Munich, the Staatsinstitut für Frühpädagogik (State Institute of Early Childhood Research, IFP) in Munich, the Institut für Schulentwicklungsforschung (Institute for School Development Research, IFS) in Dortmund, the Leibniz Institut für die Pädagogik der Naturwissenschaften (Leibniz Institute for Science Education, IPN) in Kiel, the Institut für Qualitätsentwicklung im Bildungswesen (Institute for Quality Development in the Education System, IQB) in Berlin, the Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung (Max Planck Institute for Human Development, MPIfB) in Berlin, the Wissenschaftszentrum für Sozialforschung (Social Science Research Center, WZB) in Berlin, and the
Page 2 Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (Center for European Economic Research, ZEW) in Mannheim. Leading scientists holding chairs at the following universities are also active contributors to the consortium: Bamberg, Berlin (Freie Universität and Humboldt-Universität), Bochum (Ruhr- Universität), Erlangen-Nuremberg, Giessen, Göttingen, Hamburg (Universität and Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften), Hanover, Mannheim, Munich (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and Technische Universität), Siegen, and Tübingen. Figure 1: Geographical distribution of institutes and universities participating in the National Educational Panel Study The NEPS distinguishes eight stages of education that are integrated and coordinated through a theoretical concentration on five interlinked dimensions. These dimensions (called "pillars" in the following) are: Pillar 1: Competence Development in the Life Course Pillar 2: Education Processes in Learning Environments Pillar 3: Social Inequality and Educational Decisions in the Life Course Pillar 4: Education Acquisition With Migration Background in the Life Course Pillar 5: Returns to Education in the Life Course
Page 3 These five pillars form the main structure of the NEPS. Their content will be examined throughout the lifespan with a particular focus on the following eight educational stages: Stage 1: From Birth to Early Childcare Stage 2: From Kindergarten to Elementary School Stage 3: From Elementary School to Lower Secondary School Stage 4: From Lower to Upper Secondary School Stage 5: From Upper Secondary School to Higher Education, Vocational Training, or the Labor Market Stage 6: From the Vocational Training to the Labor Market Stage 7: From Higher Education to the Labor Market Stage 8: Adult Education and Lifelong Learning The pillars and stages combined with the Administration, the Central Coordinating Department, and the Methods Department form the framing concept for the NEPS (see Figure 2). Figure 2: The Framing Concept of the National Educational Panel Study
Page 4 Six starting cohorts will be recruited between 2009 and 2012. These will contain a total of more than 60,000 participants who will be surveyed regularly over an extended period of time. Their competencies will also be assessed at set intervals. To document and analyze historical changes in the way people pass through the various education-related transitions, new starting cohorts will also be recruited and integrated into the study in later years (creating a succession of cohorts). The data collected for the NEPS will be subjected to prompt and strict quality controls before being processed and documented in a user-friendly way. While complying strictly with personal data privacy requirements, this will grant researchers in Germany and abroad the opportunity to analyze the data as exhaustively as possible, thereby contributing to the greatest possible progress in education research. Methodologically, the NEPS is based on a multicohort sequence design: Figure 3: The multicohort sequence design
In the mid- to long-term, the NEPS concept will help answer numerous questions including: How do competencies develop over the life course? Page 5 How do competencies influence decision-making processes at various critical transitions in educational careers (and vice versa)? How and to what extent are competencies influenced by opportunities to learn in the family, the peer group, and the following learning environments: Kindergarten, school, higher education, vocational training, and further education? Which competencies are decisive for obtaining educational qualifications, which for lifelong learning, and which for a successful personal and social life? The NEPS will not only deliver innovative impulses for basic research but also provide decisive information for policymakers. In particular, it will provide an important additional source of data for national education reporting, and it will strengthen the domains of "education in the life course" and "lifelong learning" along with our knowledge about developmental processes and trajectories. In the mid-term, the NEPS will also permit the study of political reforms and their effects on, for example, the acquisition of competencies or equal opportunity in the education system. In sum, the NEPS is expected to decisively improve the framing conditions for empirical education research in Germany, provide an empirical basis for advising policymakers, make a major contribution to promoting the careers of young scientists, and lead to a marked improvement in the international standing of German education research. November 2010 For more information and contact persons, please go to www.bildungspanel.de. Contact: University of Bamberg National Educational Panel Study 96045 Bamberg T: 0951/863-3404 E: contact.neps@uni-bamberg.de