Programme

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.

The following topics will be addressed:

•  The manifold goals of learning mathematics and the difficulties in approaching them
•  Individual differences in cognitive abilities: Which profiles facilitate STEM learning?
•  Opportunities and limits of ICT to support the acquisition of scientific concepts
•  Scientific reasoning as product and facilitator of content-specific learning
•  Managing diversity: Tailoring STEM education to different needs and individual characteristics