Many teaching strategies exist to develop critical thinking with students. Art students engage with critical thinking in a "Connected Art" workshop, implemented in three diverse Higher Education (HE) learning environments. Participants are interdisciplinary adult learners in the UK, Germany and Spain. Using joint practice development,…

This article explores the phenomena of personal transformation within the frame of a self-experiential workshop, named the Heroine/Hero's Journey. The Heroine/Hero is the archetype who sets out on an adventurous journey, in pursuit of her or his call for transformation. Rebillot based on Campbell's (1949) mythological work, "The Hero with a…

This article explores how critical making - or a combination of critical thinking and making - could enhance and future-proof technical and vocational education and training (TVET). The article reports from a series of multi-stakeholder participatory workshops with educators, caretakers, pupils, and makers. The workshops themselves represent an…

In the context of the rise of right-wing populism, new debates on democratic education have emerged which focus on the role of affect. The paper puts forth a postfoundational perspective on affects and emotion, proposing an analysis of how democratic education practices mobilize certain feelings. In the empirical analysis of argumentation…

Background: Inclusive research has sidelined discussion of theoretical issues with researchers with intellectual/learning disabilities. This is a situation which the Big Ideas initiative sought to change. Between 2021 and 2023, the Open University, Leipzig University and the University of Koblenz organised nine workshops to explore influential…

Plant-based dietary choices can help to mitigate climate change. Yet, most people still consume meat. Social identity influences dietary choices. This study tests whether shared identity, pro-veg*n norms, attitudes, and dietary intentions, can be strengthened via a vegan cooking workshop for children. Pupils (N = 155) cooked in small groups (3-6…

In this paper we provide a description of the project DrIVE-MATH, highlighting the main goals, intellectual outputs, outcomes, the involved partners, and activities and reports from the three-years' project. At the end we discuss the impact of the new proposed Education models at various levels, from students, to HEIs, to stakeholders.

Purpose: Approaches to solving sustainability problems require a specific problem-solving mode, encompassing the complexity, fuzziness and interdisciplinary nature of the problem. This paper aims to promote a complex systems' view of addressing sustainability problems, in particular through the tool of network science, and provides an outline of…

Migrant students tend to underperform in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subjects and are less likely to pursue higher education in STEM when compared with their nonmigrant peers. Given the substantial increase in migration, this disparity has been a central concern in science education in many European countries. The…

We report on research conducted during a language assessment literacy (LAL) project set up for employees at a university language centre. Teachers, students and an external accreditation body requested a revision of the end-of-course exams to increase comparability, transparency and alignment to course aims. We used a collaborative approach where…

To support science education, more than 350 student labs have been established throughout Germany in the last decades. The goal of these out-of-school facilities is to foster the students' scientific literacy and promote interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) by providing the students with the opportunity to conduct…

The paper discusses design thinking as a conceptual framework and methodological approach for fostering discussion and facilitating ideas that promote diversity and inclusion. We provide a theoretical overview of design thinking and related approaches to then discuss our case study, a workshop on inclusive community development that brought…

This paper explores a media-ecological perspective on film-education practice. Drawing from their own experiences of teaching film (at the Austrian Film Museum and the KurzFilmSchule, Hamburg) the authors challenge monolithic theories of film education, suggesting instead that film education practices are shaped by context, and are relational to…

We investigated the impact of inquiry-based learning on the situational interest (SI) of senior high school students in a molecular biology class. In part I of our study we designed an inquiry-based learning class as an experimental workshop in an out-of-school student lab and compared it with the participants' regular biology class. The workshop…

Educational design research yields design knowledge, often in the form of design principles or guidelines that provide the rationale or "know-why" for the design of educational interventions. As such, design principles can be utilized by designers in contexts other than the research context in which they were generated. Although research…