Scientific insights into STEM-Learning
In this international symposium initiated by Elsbeth Stern, researchers from the STEM fields as well as learning scientists will discuss how science and mathematics education can be improved at various age levels. In the past decades, educational research identified important determinants and trajectories for successful STEM learning. This primarily concerns the central role of prior knowledge for future learning. This means that content must be structured so that complex ideas can be understood at a simplified level first, and then revisited at more complex levels later on. This is supposed to pave the way to an appropriate conceptual understanding necessary for replacing the often naive and inappropriate explanations developed from everyday experience by scientifically appropriate ones. In addition, a long-term perspective on using mathematics as a tool to model complex relationships is needed, as many learners fail to formalize scientific laws.
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