To tackle the growing challenges facing our societies, such as climate change, we need to understand scientific knowledge and methods. Developing scientific literacy in schools is therefore necessary. To do so, we need to be able to assess competencies associated with scientific literacy. Secondly, educators need meaningful tools which can be…

Tasks are essential in fostering students' learning processes, and thinking skills are considered to be of central importance to learning. In order to analyse how tasks promote the development of thinking skills in school geography, we need an instrument that looks beyond a simple distinction between lower and higher order thinking. It should be…

We investigated how the sequence of presenting social media sources in an unsupervised inductive learning setting supports the acquisition of source evaluation skills in two different age groups. Participants were 63 upper and 59 lower secondary students. They had to identify characteristics of trustworthiness while studying sources labeled as…

This paper presents a replication study investigating the effectiveness of a strategy to assist students with learning difficulties in adding fractions. Drawing on the research conducted by Grünke et al. (2023), this single-case analysis extends the application of the "Look, Ask, Pick" (LAP) mnemonic technique initially introduced by…

Competency-based training (CBT) is the key training approach used in the vocational education and training sector in Australia. Competency-based training is an approach to vocational education and training (VET) designed to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to achieve competency. It focuses on an individual's mastery of skill, whereby an…

The implementation of educating "Basic Life Support (BLS) competences" in German schools is particularly affected by the often reported "implementational gap" --limited transfer of empirical findings into practice. This Design-Based Research (DBR) study evaluates two different methodologies for BLS teaching, generating…

Spatial ability is considered a major factor of intelligence and is increasingly important in times of digitization. This article explores the fostering of spatial ability through computer-aided design software. Different notions of spatial ability will be discussed, and, finally, a concept consisting of five aspects will be described. In…

Fractions are an integral part of the mathematics curriculum. Most students acquire proficiency with these concepts during the course of their elementary education and are usually able to perform basic fractions operations when reaching middle-school age. However, a considerable number of students require extra help to not fall further and further…

Fluid intelligence and conscientiousness are important predictors of students' academic performance and competence gains. Although their individual contributions have been widely acknowledged, less is known about their potential interplay. Do students profit disproportionately from being both smart and conscientious? We addressed this question…

By complying with their "job", i.e., completing the tasks set for them by teachers, pupils develop their subject skills. They do this in a classroom setting where they can perceive each other regarding their abilities. Besides content learning, pupils, thus, also have to position themselves emotionally and action-practically towards the…

Tasks are crucial for gaining access to powerful knowledge in geography and for fostering higher-order thinking in lessons; therefore, they are key to subject-specific pedagogy. After analysing tasks in geography textbooks for upper secondary education, it was revealed that higher-order thinking barely occurs in textbooks in the Netherlands and is…

Writing, as a highly complex strategic literacy skill alongside reading, is an essential prerequisite for learning and determines a student's educational success. In diverse contexts, a student's linguistic repertoire may involve multiple languages, which may serve as mutual resources in his or her multilingual writing skill development. Drawing…

Many people use satellite images in their professional and everyday lives, and school curricula often require their use. Yet, the ways teachers actually use satellite images in the classroom is often limited, if they use them at all. The YCHANGE project trained teachers to use remote sensing data by themselves and to use it in their classrooms.…

In today's rapidly evolving global economy, it is essential to equip young learners with the necessary skills and knowledge to thrive in the workforce and contribute to economic development. Education is a vital driver of human capital and development in countries, and the effectiveness of any educational system depends heavily on its curriculum.…

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is intended to enable individuals to shape a fair and sustainable society. Implemented at schools, ESD addresses specific topics, e.g. "globalization" or "pollutants in clothing". This study investigates what challenges are connected with such issues in class and how students deal…