Bildung Psychology: Theory and Practice of Use Inspired Basic Research

The concept of Bildung-Psychology, as developed by Christiane Spiel and her colleagues, combines ideas from developmental and educational psychology to describe educational processes with a strong focus on lifelong learning. Bildung-Psychology is concerned with all educational processes contributing to the development of individuals, as well as all conditions and measures potentially influencing these processes, and it aims to stimulate integrative use inspired basic research in the field of education. The structural model of Bildung-Psychology contains three dimensions: (1) the Bildung-career, (2) several functional areas, and (3) different levels of activities. The theoretical framework systematically classifies psychological actions in the field of education.

This book combines theoretical pieces discussing important conceptual topics within Bildung-Psychology, with empirical contributions focused on different phases of the Bildung-career. The studies were conducted in countries across Europe, and across the various age-specific educational phases in the Bildung-career. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Developmental Psychology.

Dagmar Strohmeier is Professor at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Linz. She studies peer relations among (immigrant) adolescents with a cross-cultural and cross-national perspective. She developed and cross-nationally implemented the ViSC Program in schools and is the principal investigator of the EU funded "Europe 2038" project.

Petra Wagner is Professor at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Linz. She has a broad experience in psychological research as well as teaching. Her research focuses on self-regulation, scholastic stress factors, time management, social work in schools, and evaluation and is published in various international journal articles.

Barbara Schober is Professor for Psychological Research on Education and Transfer at the University of Vienna, Austria. Her main research activities focus on lifelong learning, learning motivation and its development, gender differences in educational contexts, self-regulation, teacher training, development and evaluation of intervention programs in educational context and implementation research.