Assessing cases of child welfare requires the ability to engage with different sources of information systematically. This study examined how case-based learning (CBL) can be used to support social work students (N = 104) acquire knowledge crucial to assessing cases of child welfare and whether benefits of CBL could be maximized by structuring the…

Most chemistry students struggle with interpreting and understanding NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectra and the general concepts of NMR spectroscopy. NMR spectroscopy seems to be difficult to both teach and learn. Therefore, the corresponding courses should be investigated in more detail. We conducted a survey with N = 39 German university…

The greenhouse effect is a complex scientific phenomenon that plays a crucial role in understanding climate change. Grasping students' understanding of this phenomenon on the content-specific level but also how students' conceptions are organized is vital for effective climate change education. This study addresses both levels and delves into the…

Students at all levels of education experience difficulties with the concepts of measurement uncertainties. One task that includes concepts of measurement uncertainties is a data comparison problem where students decide whether two datasets are in agreement or not--an authentic scientific practice. To aid students with these concepts and tasks,…

Despite rapid changes in education, science classrooms will remain central forums where fragmented pieces of information are brought together to construct coherent knowledge as concepts and explanatory scientific storylines. There is limited work stressing the importance of the interplay between how content is communicated through pedagogical…

The following paper continues the previous part, and examines the influence of crystallography on Fröbel's conception of mathematics. In this part we focus on yet unpublished material. These unpublished notes of Fröbel underline the visual transfer of drawing and images of crystals, mainly developed by Haüy, which were widespread at the turn of…

Educational technologies in mathematics typically focus on fostering either procedural knowledge by means of structured tasks or, less often, conceptual knowledge by means of exploratory tasks. However, both types of knowledge are needed for complete domain knowledge that persists over time and supports subsequent learning. We investigated in two…

Friedrich Fröbel is known as the founder of the modern kindergarten and for his development of novel learning materials called Gifts and Occupations. One of the foci of Fröbel's programme was mathematical education, which he addressed and taught through various activities that encouraged the largely implicit transmission of mathematical…

Generative AI technologies such as large language models show novel potential to enhance educational research. For example, generative large language models were shown to be capable of solving quantitative reasoning tasks in physics and concept tests such as the Force Concept Inventory (FCI). Given the importance of such concept inventories for…

Planning and conducting experiments require the application of the control of variables strategy (CVS). Research indicates that older children can learn the CVS by engaging in guided-inquiry activities. It has not been studied yet whether this is also the case for children as young as 6- to 7-years. 145 children aged 6-7 years participated in a…

The course design "Training OC" for training the application of basic concepts consists of four topics: formula language, structure-property relations, reaction mechanisms, and complex tasks that the students should solve with the conceptual knowledge they acquired in the first three topics. A main goal of the course was to enable the…

Learning to interpret organic structures not as an arrangement of lines and letters but, rather, as a representation of chemical entities is a challenge in organic chemistry. To successfully deal with the variety of molecules or mechanistic representations, a learner needs to understand how a representation depicts domain-specific information.…

The concepts of the Coriolis and the centrifugal force are essential in various scientific fields and they are standard components of introductory physics lectures. In this paper, we explore how students understand and apply concepts of rotating frames of reference in the context of an example lecture demonstration experiment. We found in a…

In Germany, 93% of young people between the ages of 10 and 18 play video games daily. Political geography, in particular popular geopolitics, have found that video games can help to establish and develop people's understanding of geopolitics. Consequently, this affects geography education, providing both challenges and opportunities for teaching.…

Many geoscience phenomena cannot be perceived at human temporal or spatial scales. As a consequence, we can only understand many processes that drive geological phenomena through analogical reasoning. Building deep conceptual understanding requires instruction that activates the appropriate source analogs and allows students to build useful…