A WIN FOR RESEARCH
On 3 December 2020 the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research (GEI) in Braunschweig honoured two research papers that have made significant contributions to the field of international educational media research. The official ceremony to confer this year’s Georg Eckert Research Award could not take place because of the Covid19 pandemic but the recipients were congratulated virtually for their outstanding research by Lower Saxony’s Minister for Science and Culture, Björn Thümler. The Georg Eckert Research Award has been awarded biennially since 2010 and is sponsored by the Westermann publishing group with a stipend of 5,000 Euro. The tributes to the winners can be found on YouTube: https://bit.ly/35m27Hk
The presentation of the Georg Eckert Research Award underlines the significance of the Braunschweig region within the research field of educational media. Professor Eckhardt Fuchs, director of the GEI said ‘This research award emphasises the fact that the region can not only achieve great things within the fields of “hard” technology and natural sciences, but also produces exceptional research in the humanities and cultural sciences’.
The national and international significance of educational media research and the contribution made by the GEI is clear in the research papers selected by the independent jury. ‘We would like to express our heartfelt congratulations to the two winners. Their dissertations undoubtedly demonstrate the great socio-political significance of educational media. Educational media research ensures that standards of textbooks and educational media are maintained, which is why we are delighted to support such research through our sponsorship of the Georg Eckert Research Award’ explained Sven Fischer, chair of the Westermann Group management board.
Johanna Katharina Bethge was honoured for her dissertation ‘Beyond Textbooks – Das Schulbuch als Medium zur kulturellen Demokratisierung Westdeutschlands, 1944-1952’ (Beyond Textbooks – Textbooks as a medium to cultural democratisation in West Germany 1944-1952). Her research not only examined printed textbooks but also explored how they are produced, which is an aspect of educational media research that is often neglected. Another distinctive aspect of her research was that it examined both North American and German archive material, due to her focus on transatlantic cooperation in the redesign and reconstitution of German textbooks after the Second World War. Bethge’s work is therefore a significant piece of research in the historic and social contextualisation of German Textbooks, and history textbooks in particular.
Dr Kai Krüger also received the Research Award, for his doctoral thesis titled ‘Stunde null, Wirtschaftswunder, Mangelwirtschaft- gegenwärtige Schulgeschichtsbücher zwischen historischem Lernen und normativer Darstellung’ (Zero hour, economic miracle, shortage economy - historical teaching and normative depictions in current history textbooks) which he submitted in 2018 and which has since been published by transcript under the title ‘Wirtschaftswunder und Mangelwirtschaft – Zur Produktion einer Erfolgsgeschichte in der deutschen Geschichtskultur’ (Economic miracle and shortage economy – on the production of a success story in German historical culture). The examination of how the ‘economic miracle’ and command economies were depicted is a summary of the economic history of the FRG and GDR from 1945 to 1973 on the one hand, and highlights, on the other, the deliberate alteration of contemporary textbook source material.
About the Recipients
Johanna Katharina Bethge completed a teaching degree in history and German language and literature, with Protestant theology, at Heidelberg University. While studying for her PhD in history she undertook her traineeship period to qualify to teach in grammar schools. During her degree studies and her doctoral studies she received grants from the Studienförderwerks Klaus Murmann within the Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft. She published her first papers on questions related to history in 2014.
Dr Kai Krüger has a background in history and physics teaching, which he studied at the Freie Universität Berlin. While he was studying for his Bachelor of Arts und Master of Education degrees he was involved in a number of student and academic bodies at the FU Berlin. While studying for his doctorate he continued to train to be a teacher. His started to publish papers on history in 2017.
About the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research
The GEI conducts research into the production, content and appropriation of educational media for schools in its socio-cultural, political, economic and historical contexts. It also provides unique research infrastructure services that are founded in research and available on site and digitally. At the core of the Institute is its research library containing the world’s most comprehensive collection of international textbooks for the subjects of history, social studies/politics, geography and ethics/religion. The Institute develops, and freely distributes, digital infrastructures for research on and using textbooks in the fields of cultural studies, humanities and social sciences. In addition, the GEI provides transfer services based on critical research for application in national and international education practice and theory.
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