The ability to reflect on teaching is crucially important for the professionalization of trainee teachers. The fostering of reflection processes -- by means of the systematic analysis of one's own and others' teaching from subject-specific, methodological, and educational science perspectives -- plays a central role in a continuing and consecutive…

Although well researched in educational studies, inquiry-based learning, a student-centred way of teaching, is far away from being implemented in day-to-day science and mathematics teaching on a large scale. It is a challenge for teachers to adopt this new way of teaching in an often not supportive school context. Therefore it is important to…

Learning-by-explaining (to fictitious others) has been shown to be an effective instructional method to support students' generative learning. In this study, we investigated differential effects of the modality of explaining (written versus oral) on students' quality of explanations and learning. Forty-eight students worked on a hypertext about…

Students often have misconceptions about terrestrial carbon flows and there is a lack of coherence in students' explanations regarding the different levels of biological organisation at which these processes occur. In this study, problem-based teaching materials on the topic of terrestrial carbon flows were developed and tested with 15 students…

The present study looks at pre-service teachers' beliefs about multilingualism in school and to what extent these can be influenced. It is based on the pre- and post-test evaluation of a seminar concept promoting linguistically responsive teaching, which was tested with N = 27 pre-­service teachers in Germany during the course of one semester. The…

Conceptual knowledge is a crucial tool for students to understand scientific phenomena. Knowledge about the structure and function of mental concepts potentially helps science educators to foster the acquisition of this tool. Specifically, the coherence of students' mental concepts is an intensely discussed issue within the related conceptual…

Since many decisions in politics, economics, and social sciences are based on statistics, statistical literacy is a key component for an active citizen. Statistical skills and statistical reasoning can already be enhanced in primary school. Therefore, not only in Germany, statistics is an element of the primary-school curriculum, which usually…

Geogames are complex location-based games for smartphones and they are part of a critical discussion within the community of environmental education. The aim of the study is to asses if smartphone games are suitable to foster connectedness to nature and if there are differences between a complex Geogame and a less-demanding treasure hunt. For this…

Developing students' systems thinking is an often-posed demand in education for sustainable development (ESD) and science literacy. Several studies have shown that systems thinking can be fostered in students of different education levels. Therefore, science teachers who are required to teach ESD-relevant topics should be proficient in systems…

A total of 268 primary school children (age 8.75 ± 0.65) spent one day at a wildlife park attending environmental education aiming at high cognitive achievement and motivation alongside maintained discipline. To accomplish this at an out-of-school learning setting, we compared our preferred 'guided learning at workstations' (G) combining the…

This paper reports findings of a project on pedagogical translanguaging (PTL) among 128 fourth-grade students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in German primary schools. Over a period of six months, 20% of lesson time in EFL classes was devoted to multilingualism involving students' minority languages. In a control group pre-post-test…

In recent years, the ability to use mathematics flexibly in everyday situations is increasingly accentuated, and mathematics education gives more and more attention to problems with realistic contexts. However, it is reported very often that learners have substantial difficulties in connecting mathematics to real situations. In order to solve…

Although there is a common understanding of instructional sensitivity, it lacks a common operationalization. Various approaches have been proposed, some focusing on item responses, others on test scores. As approaches often do not produce consistent results, previous research has created the impression that approaches to instructional sensitivity…

Counseling parents concerning students' learning processes is considered to be an increasingly important competence area of teachers. However, few educational programs exist specifically focusing on improving this essential teacher competence, particularly in early teacher education. The current study, which took place at a German university,…

Problem-based learning can have a great impact on the acquisition of practical knowledge, which is a central learning aim in the field of teacher education. Therefore, we implemented a problem-based learning approach in four seminars on educational assessment. In this paper, we outline our didactic design and discuss the results of the first…