Project description

Goal of the dissertation project is to investigate conditions for successful learning in an social sciences oriented out-of-school lab. Out-of-school labs are particular learning settings that engage students in authentic experiential learning to increase their literacy and interest in the field of natural and social sciences. Often, these settings involve minimal or no instruction, but research on learning in and out-of-school shows that including instruction is important for effective learning. The question arises, how out-of-school labs could balance the withholding and giving of instruction to enable authentic but also effective learning. A promising balance has been found in the Productive Failure approach, which enables authentic learning by simulating the scientific practice of seeking solutions to a novel problem. Therefore, Productive Failure as authentic learning approach with delayed instruction seems to have potential to promote students’ scientific literacy in an out-of-school lab. The aim of the dissertation project is to investigate by quasi-experimental studies, whether Productive Failure contains relevant conditions for successful learning of educational research methods in an out-of-school lab.