Educational Change and Social Transformation

After the Berlin Wall's fall in 1989, East Germany's educational system underwent profound transformation alongside broader economic, political, and social restructuring. First published in 1996, this book provides an account of the nature and extent of these changes from both a policy and a classroom perspective.

Hans N. Weiler is Professor Emeritus of Education and Political Science, and Academic Secretary, Emeritus, Stanford University. He was director of UNESCO's International Institute for Educational Planning in Paris (IIEP) in the 1970s and has served as a consultant to a number of international organizations (including the World Bank and the African Development Bank), foundations and national governments in Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia. His publications deal with the politics of educational change, the international politics of knowledge production, and the dynamics of reform and nonreform in higher education. Heinrich Mintrop is Professor of Education at Berkeley School of Education, UC Berkeley. Before his academic career, he worked as a secondary school teacher in both Germany and the United States. Mintrop earned his Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University (1996). His research focuses on how educational policies shape institutional structures that influence teaching and learning in schools. He has received funding from various foundations and has conducted comparative studies on school accountability systems. Elisabeth Fuhrmann spent many years on classroom teaching, and curriculum research and development. At the time of the first publication, she was the member of the board of directors of the Commission for Didactics in the German Association for Educational Research.

1. Introduction 2. Primary and Secondary Schools in East and West Germany: A Historical Perspective 3. Transforming the Content of Education: The Dynamics of Curriculum Reform in Brandenburg 4. Teachers and the Democratization of Schools 5. The New Structure of Secondary Schools: Macro Politics and Micro Adaptations 6. Reproduction Versus Differentiation: The Politics of Higher Education 7. Educational Change and Social Transformation Appendix: Glossary of German Terms Diagrams of the East and West German School Systems