Contact
Prof. Dr. Matthias Nückles
Cognition, Learning, and Instruction
Department of Educational Science
matthias.nueckles|at|ezw.uni-freiburg.de
Contact
TEBER
Research focus on analysis and promotion of evidence-based thinking and acting among prospective and in-service teachers.
Teachers‘ Evidence-Based Reasoning
The ability to design instruction based on scientifically sound pedagogical and didactic principles is increasingly seen as a goal for the education of prospective teachers by both educational researchers and policymakers. In this context, reference is often made to the theory-practice gap, according to which the educational sciences (educational psychology, empirical teaching-learning research) have developed a large body of practice-relevant scientific knowledge, which, however, has so far hardly found its way into the teaching practice of teachers. The reasons for this problem are manifold. One main cause is the scarcity of university learning opportunities in the field of educational science, which leads to teachers making didactic decisions in everyday life mostly without recourse to the knowledge of teaching-learning research. Furthermore, there is a lack of a theoretical conception of evidence-based teaching and of the specific function of subject-specific, subject-didactic and educational science knowledge with regard to the planning and design of lessons.
Cooperation: Prof. Dr. Thamar Voss and Prof. Dr. Jörg Wittwer, Department of Educational Sience, Universität Freiburg
ACTion
Modeling, Explaining, Practicing, and Receiving Feedback: How Can the Acquisition of Core Practices in Teacher Education Be Optimally Fostered?
The Acquisition of Core Practices in Teacher Education
In the ACTion research project, we investigate how the instructional phases of modeling, explaining, practicing, and receiving feedback should be designed to enable prospective teachers to optimally acquire practical teaching skills. The authors focus on the acquisition of so-called “core practices” (McDonald et al., 2013), defined as cross-disciplinary, evidence-based, and trainable instructional activities. Should prospective teachers first try out “core practices” and then receive a positive modeling example along with an explanation? Or is it more effective to study a positive modeling example and explanation first before performing the core practice? Can the acquisition of core practices be further enhanced through a pre-structured trial phase in microteaching? What role does feedback play in skill acquisition?
To answer these questions, key educational and psychological models of instruction and skill acquisition (the “Learning Cycle” by McDonald et al., 2013, “Productive Failure” by Kapur, 2008, and “ACT-R” by Anderson & Schunn, 2000) are comparatively discussed with regard to their central theoretical assumptions. Based on this discussion, hypotheses are derived about the optimal sequence and design of training phases, which are tested in four extensive experimental training studies. The core practice being trained is supporting students in the self-regulated comprehension of informational texts, which can ideally and evidence-based be implemented through the reading strategy training “Reciprocal Teaching (RT)” by Palinscar and Brown (1984). The composition of teacher training sessions, as well as the sequence and specific design of the training phases, are systematically varied. Dependent variables include (1) conceptual knowledge and attitudes toward RT, (2) competence in the professional vision of RT teaching situations, and (3) competence in effectively implementing RT with students.
The project empirically examines prominent instructional and skill acquisition approaches from educationally influenced teacher education research and cognitive psychological teaching and learning research. To date, no studies in teacher education have systematically and experimentally varied the instructional phases of explaining, modeling, practicing, and receiving feedback to investigate their learning effects on knowledge, professional vision, and practical competence. At the theoretical level, the project contributes to the integration of approaches that have previously been treated in separate “scientific communities.” Practically, evidence-based recommendations are developed on how competency-oriented teacher training should be structured in the education of prospective teachers.
Contact: Prof. Dr. Matthias Nückles, Hadmut Hipp (teacher and research associate), Prof. Dr. Marc Kleinknecht, Anna Holstein (research associate)
Funding: German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft, DFG), project number: 491157666
TIPS
Teachers as Informed Pragmatists
Facilitating Didactic Reasoning: Teachers as Informed Pragmatists
From an epistemological perspective teaching can be conceptualized as complex problem solving (Lampert, 1985; Wegner, Anders, & Nückles, 2014). This means that when planning lessons, there are different didactic strategies to achieve a certain goal and a teacher must be able to weigh up which strategy or combination of strategies will prove to be the most effective. Yet, it is largely unexplored how the ability to make informed didactic decisions and how to justify them based on pedagogical principles and evidence can be taught to preservice teachers.
To this end, we developed a model of didactic reasoning that specifies different types of argumentative moves required to generate and justify didactic actions related to lesson planning. Our model is based on Toulmin’s model of argument (1958, 2003), draws on the philosophy of science (Bunge, 1966), and epistemological foundations of psychotherapy research (Perrez, 1989). Based on this model, we developed self-learning materials (e-portfolio tasks, modelling examples, tutorials) and test them in intervention studies with the aim of teaching didactic reasoning to preservice teachers.
Contact: Roland Ebert-Glang and Prof. Dr. Matthias Nückles
Funding: Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), second funding phase for the ‘Qualitätsoffensive Lehrerbildung’ in the framework of the joint research project FACE – Researching Practice, Practicing Research.
Publications
Schuba, C., & Nückles, M. (2020). “Teachers as informed pragmatists”: Supporting preservice history teachers’ didactic reasoning by argumentative writing [Paper presentation]. Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA, United States of America.
Nückles, M., & Schuba, C. (2019). „Teachers as Informed Pragmatists“ – ein theoretisches Modell und empirische Befunde zur Förderung didaktischer Argumentationskompetenz von angehenden Lehrkräften. In BMBF (Hrsg.), Profilbildung im Lehramtsstudium. Beiträge der „Qualitätsoffensive Lehrerbildung“ zur individuellen Orientierung, curricularen Entwicklung und institutionellen Verankerung (S. 132–142). BMBF.
DICE
Diagnostic Competence
Do mathematics teachers consider educational psychological evidence on cognitive load theory when assessing the difficulty of mathematics tasks for students?
The ability to assess the difficulty of tasks for students is an important facet of diagnostic competence. On the one hand, teachers need didactic knowledge about difficulty-generating features of tasks (Ostermann, Leuders & Nückles, 2015). On the other hand, they should also draw on pedagogical-psychological principles for the didactic design of tasks, as they have been derived from Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) and have been empirically proven many times (e.g., integrated format, solution examples, and intermediate goals, cf. Sweller, Ayres, & Kalyuga, 2011). When mathematics teachers assess task difficulty for students*, do they incorporate these evidence-based CLT principles? We address this question in empirical studies in which we present prospective and in-service teachers with didactically optimized (e.g., with integrated format) and non-optimized mathematics tasks (e.g., split-attention format) according to Cognitive Load Theory principles and ask participants to estimate how difficult the tasks are likely to be for students* to solve. We then compare these estimates with the empirically determined actual task difficulties.
Contact: Prof. Dr. Matthias Nückles
Cooperation: Prof. Dr. Timo Leuders (Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg)
Funding: Own funds as well as funding within the framework of the doctoral program “Subject-related pedagogical competencies and understanding of science – pedagogical professionalism in mathematics and the natural sciences” (ProMatNat, spokespersons: Prof. Dr. Matthias Nückles and Prof. Dr. Timo Leuders), funded by the state of Baden-Württemberg.
Publications
Wagner, S., Bauersfeld, J., & Nückles, M. (2020). Berücksichtigen Mathematiklehrkräfte pädagogisch-psychologische Evidenz zur Theorie der kognitiven Belastung, wenn sie die Schwierigkeit von Mathematikaufgaben für Schüler*innen beurteilen? Vortrag angenommen bei der Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Empirische Bildungsforschung, Potsdam.
Lachner, A., Weinhuber, M., & Nückles, M. (2019). To teach or not to teach the conceptual structure of mathematics? Teachers undervalue the potential of principle-oriented explanations. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 58, 175–185. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2019.03.008
Ostermann, A., Leuders, T., & Nückles, M. (2018). Improving the judgment of task difficulties: Prospective teachers’ diagnostic competence in the area of functions and graphs. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 21, 579–605. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-017-9369-z
Ostermann, A., Leuders, T., & Nückles, M. (2015). Wissen, was Schülerinnen und Schülern schwerfällt. Welche Faktoren beeinflussen die Schwierigkeitseinschätzung von Mathematikaufgaben? Journal für Mathematikdidaktik, 36, 45–76. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13138-015-0073-1
Hellmann, K., & Nückles, M. (2013). Expert blind spot in pre-service and in-service math-ematics teachers: Task design moderates overestimation of novices’ performance. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2518–2523). Cognitive Science Society.