2014-2016: Development of a Student Research Centre
A goal of science education is to guide students to independent research. The success of such efforts in school is limited due to various reasons. Extracurricular learning centres offer a way for students to experience, learn and reflect on “real” scientific work. Student Research centres provide a quite new approach. In contrary to the familiar concept of school labs, student research centres do not present fixed experiments but focus on the independent research on longer-term research projects. The idea is to provide a place to go where students can get support, suggestions, partners, materials, etc. in order to structure and carry out their own research projects independently. This can also be linked to student competitions like e.g. “Jugend Forscht”.
Further Reading about Inquiry Based Learning:
Crawford, B.A. (2014). From Inquiry to Scientific Practices in the Science Classroom. In: Lederman, N.G., & Abell, S.K. (Hrsg.), Handbook of research on science education (Vol. II), S. 515-541. Routledge, New York.
Minner, D. D., Levy, A. J., & Century, J. (2010). Inquiry‐based science instruction—What is it and does it matter? Results from a research synthesis years 1984 to 2002. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 47(4), 474-496.
Priemer, B. (2011). Was ist das Offene beim offenen Experimentieren. Zeitschrift für Didaktik der Naturwissenschaften, 17, 315-337.