Transversal skills, such as complex problem solving (CPS) are viewed as central twenty-first-century skills. Recent empirical findings have already supported the importance of CPS for early academic advancement. We wanted to determine whether CPS could also contribute to the understanding of career advancement later in life. Towards this end, we…

Action research is defined as using research activities to develop concrete societal practices. Action research understands the change of practice as being already a central aim of the research process itself, and it also seeks to contribute to the professional development of all participants in the particular field of study. Even though (or maybe…

Declining public finances and ever increasing national and international competition force state-owned German universities to adapt to an increasingly competitive environment. In a first phase the universities have concentrated their efforts on the optimisation of budgeting processes and on the development of strategies and goals to come to a more…

Worldwide, a tendency is visible in which upper secondary science curricula are innovated in the direction of context-based education. Crucial to these innovations is the way teachers interact with newly developed teaching materials and implement them in classroom practice. The focus of our research is to identify characteristics of the…

This study investigates teachers' pedagogical content knowledge, professional beliefs, work-related motivation, and self-regulation as aspects of their professional competence. Specifically, it examines how these aspects impact instruction and, in turn, student outcomes. In a nationally representative sample of 194 German secondary school…

Purpose: Online programs rely on the use of educational technology for knowledge sharing in academic virtual communities of practice (vCoPs). This poses the question as to which factors influence technology acceptance. Previous research has investigated the inter-relationship between educational technology acceptance (ETA) and the vCoP context…

In the Federal Republic of Germany, many efforts are currently under way to improve the quality of early childhood education. One starting point is the quality of the professional training of early childhood practitioners. However, discussions mainly refer to input factors, such as the training curricula or the formal level of training. Output…

Around the world, the importance of education to individual and societal success has increased at a breathtaking pace as a new knowledge-based economy has emerged. As a consequence, most countries have been engaged in intensive reforms of their education systems, and many have focused especially on improving teacher education, recognizing that…

Numerous reports and articles have decried the mediocrity of U.S. students' foreign language skills and have called for improved language education. One study that looked at foreign language education in 19 countries suggests several characteristics of successful foreign language programs: starting early, providing an articulated framework,…

This document contains the second volume of the proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. Conference presentations are centered around the theme "Mathematics at the Centre." This volume features 60 research reports by presenters with last names beginning between Abr…