Unterstützungssysteme im einzelschulischen Entwicklungsprozess

Against the background of changing ideas about the governance of education systems, state support systems for school development (including counselling, inter-school networks and inspections) have been introduced into school practice in recent years and their effects have been examined in empirical research.

This article aims to further differentiate the state of knowledge in this regard and, to this end, pursues the overarching question of the extent to which support systems are included in the development work of schools. With its focus on the individual school development process (which enables the simultaneous consideration of several support systems) and its recourse to the concept of school development as a regulatory process (which allows a more systematic localisation of the support systems in the individual school development process), it differs in two respects from previous empirical work on the topic. The findings from 16 content-analysed interviews with principals indicate that school development consultations in particular are used to deal with more extensive school development tasks at “neuralgic points” in the development process in situations that are challenging both within and outside the school. They are called upon for regulation in all areas, in all steps and at all levels and cover a very broad spectrum of specific services. Also all other support systems are used for regulation in the area of (meta-)cognitive dispositions, at the interpersonal level and (with the exception of comparison tests) in the step of adaptation. In addition to these similarities, there are—as expected due to conceptual orientations—system-specific differences with regard to the places of use in the school development process.