Research
8/2023 – 8/2024: Research project “Education for sustainable development in early childhood and social education institutions” (SENSE) (funded by the Euregio Mobility Fund, with Prof. Dr. Iris Nentwig-Gesemann, University of Bolzano and Prof. Dr. Simona De Falco, University of Trento)
Brief description: The project aims to outline Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as a global challenge, to discuss various social and early childhood education concepts and to gain an in-depth insight into examples of good practice of sustainability-oriented education and educational work.
6/2023 – 5/2025: Research project “The quality of preschool teachers’ training in Austria and Ukraine: A comparative analysis” (funded by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research; Joint Project with Univ.-Prof. Dr. Oresta Karpenko, Drohobych Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University, Ukraine)
Brief description: The research project conducts a comparative analysis of preschool teachers’ training at pedagogical colleges (Austria) and universities (Ukraine) by doing document analyses, surveys, and guided interviews.
9/2022 – 8/2023: Research project “Assistenzkräfte in Kindergärten – eine bedeutende, aber kaum beachtete Berufsgruppe“ (Assistant teachers in preschools - an important, but hardly noticed vocational group) (funded by the Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Tirol; with Prof. Dr. Bernhard Koch, University College of Teacher Education Tyrol)
Brief description: The research project investigates different aspects of the professionalization of assistant staff in preschools in Tyrol.
3/2021 – 4/2022: Research project “COVID-19 Pandemie und elterliche Förderung von Early Literacy” (COVID-19 pandemic and parental support for early literacy) (funded by the State of Tirol)
Brief description: The research project examines aspects of parental support for the competencies of children in the field of early literacy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study is targeted primarily at parents of children in preschools who are almost of school age (last year of preschool).
7/2020 – 12/2020: Research project on home learning environments during the COVID-19 pandemic (with Junior Prof. Dr Melanie Jester, University of Koblenz-Landau, internal University funds)
10/2018 – 3/2022: Research project InKi “Interaktionsqualität von Kindern im Kindergarten” (Quality of Children´s Interactions in Preschool) (funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF)
Brief description: Children primarily acquire fundamental skills through interactive processes. The quality of these interactions is very important for their linguistic, cognitive, social and emotional development as well as for the educational success of the children. Particularly in the context of disadvantages in access to education, findings about the quality of interactions in preschools are therefore extremely relevant. The study’s goal consists in examining the quality of the children’s interactions with preschool teachers and peers as well as the quality of task orientation in preschools in a cross-sectional and longitudinal study of a sample of 360 preschool teachers from 90 preschools in Austria (Tyrol).
9/2018 – 8/2021: Research project LeiKi Leitungsqualität in Kindertageseinrichtungen” (Quality of Leadership in Preschools) (funded by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research, Germany; with Dr Thilo Schmidt, University of Koblenz-Landau)
Brief description: In the project “Leadership quality in kindergartens”, the researchers investigate the role of people in leadership positions in kindergartens with regard to their pedagogical process quality. The study will also highlight the institutions and the personal characteristics of the leadership staff (including professional qualifications and subject background, professional goals), in order to capture the relation between leadership quality and pedagogical process quality. A special focus will be on the leadership behaviour in heterogeneous educational teams. The project will make use, amongst other tools, of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System commonly used in English-speaking countries to gather the data.
10/2017 – 6/2018: Research project “Qualitätsindikatoren von Waldkinderbetreuungseinrichtungen in Tirol” (Quality Indicators of Forest Day Care Centers in Tyrol) (funded by the State of Tyrol and the Vice-Rectorate for Research of the University of Innsbruck)
2013 – 2015: Participating scientist of the project „Teaching and Learning Processes” (funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG, Information at: http://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/person/230656202)