The planning of adequate control groups is a central aspect of educational research. Didactical studies, however, are often field studies encountering many problems of everyday classroom teaching? Recent research has indicated that teachers and their beliefs have an enormous influence on learning and retention. Taking this line of evidence…

In an effort to overcome deficiencies in teaching molecular biology at school, a workshop in an out-of-school laboratory including only authentic experiments was developed. Evaluation of 337 A-level 12th graders followed a quasi-experimental design, with one hands-on group, two non-experimental control groups (at school/in the laboratory), and one…