Future Topics of School Research

For the past two decades, quantitative and qualitative school research has experienced a significant expansion and increase in level in the German-speaking area. This paper will elaborate which currently foreseeable topics or subject areas will be of importance for school research in the future. It is pointed out initially that school research has rather circumvented or redefined the classical curriculum questions, and the problem of prognosis of school futures is clarified using earlier examples. Four future areas of school research are then identified: (1) analysis of the course and consequences of the Corona pandemic, with regard to its two facets 'new educational inequality', and (2) 'digitalization'. The further development and, if necessary, reorganization of the teaching profession or the teaching professions and their training, or of the pedagogical professions in general, will be a second topic to be addressed by research (3). On the basis of long-running trends, current models of the future of schooling are presented and discussed, which are possibly heading for a farewell to the 'old' school, and in which the term 'de-schooling' marks a creeping loss of its significance (4). School research can and will (have to) provide insights into these future issues that will feed into the public and political debate about the further development of the school system.