Title: Joining Forces: The Promotion of Public-Private Partnerships to Bring Computers into West German Schools in the 1980s
Abstract:This chapter focuses on the dynamics and conflicts of interest that have emerged in the process of involving new actors in education policymaking to prepare West German schools for the digital age. In...This chapter focuses on the dynamics and conflicts of interest that have emerged in the process of involving new actors in education policymaking to prepare West German schools for the digital age. In the 1980s, the federal government of West Germany saw the involvement of the private sector as a way to reduce the financial burden on the state in equipping schools with computers. Moreover, it considered the establishment of a public-private partnership under its auspices as a means to strengthen centralized state power within Germany's federal system in order to reduce regional disparities and differences in the efforts to integrate computers into schools. An intermediary actor in the form of the support association "Computers and Education" was brought into play to mediate between the interests of the private and the public sector. However, the association's efforts to reconcile the different vested interests of the involved parties in its mission to kickstart and boost the introduction of computers into public education eventually failed.Read More