Contact
Prof. Dr. Thamar Voss
Teaching, Learning, and Motivation
thamar.voss|at|ezw.uni-freiburg.de
Contact
WisE
Wissenschafts- und Evidenzorientierung im Lehrer*innenberuf
Science and Evidence Orientation in the Teaching Profession
The School of Education (Freiburg Advanced Center of Education, FACE) established an interdisciplinary college in 2024 called “Scientific and Evidence-Based Orientation in the Teaching Profession” (WisE), which will admit new doctoral candidates every three years. The aim of the college is to research how the use of evidence from the subject disciplines, the subject didactics, and from education science can be systematically and sustainably promoted among (prospective) teachers. In interdisciplinary projects, research and teaching are closely interlinked to make valuable contributions to the understanding of evidence-based practices by teachers. Specifically, interventions to promote competencies in the use of scientific findings for teachers will be developed and implemented in teacher education. The interventions to be developed focus on core practices (Forzani, 2014). Core Practices are activities that frequently occur in the classroom, such as diagnosing, preventing classroom disruptions, or explaining, and that have been shown to promote student learning. The empirically established Four-Component Instructional Design Model (4C/ID, Merriënboer & Kirschner, 2001; 2013) and other models that focus on coherence formation or knowledge integration serve as the basis for the instructional implementation of the interventions.
These projects are situated in educational science or a subject didactic and are supervised by interdisciplinary teams from educational science, subject didactics, and subject sciences at the University of Freiburg and the Freiburg University of Education. The disciplines involved are educational science, psychology, physics, mathematics, and sports.
SkeBi
Skepsis gegenüber den Bildungswissenschaften
Skeptical beliefs towards educational sciences
Teachers’ practices are often based on intuition rather than research results. An important rea-son for this general distrust in information from the education science. This contradicts research results that point to the importance of teachers’ pedagogical/psychological knowledge for suc-cessful teaching. Since beliefs are related to a teachers’ practices and have a self-stabilizing function, the skeptical beliefs of student teachers can impair the development of professional competence. Accordingly, in our research, we investigate future teachers’ beliefs about the ed-ucation science. We found evidence for skeptical beliefs about education science: Education science is viewed as less complex and less important for teaching success than the content dis-ciplines (e.g., mathematics, physics, history). In further studies, we are investigating the conse-quences as well as the antecedents of these skeptical beliefs.
Publications
Zeeb, H., & Voss, T. (2024). Fostering preservice teachers’ research-related beliefs and motivation with growth mindset and utility value interventions. Motivation Science. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/mot0000352
Voss, T. (2022). Not useful to inform teaching practice? Student teachers hold skeptical beliefs about evidence from education science. Frontiers in Education, 7, 976791. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.976791
Voss, T., & Wittwer, J. (2020, März 25–27). „Das ist doch unwichtig.“ Überzeugungen über die bildungswissenschaftlichen Inhalte im Lehramt und deren Bedeutung für die Rezeption von Evidenz. In T. Voss & J. Wittwer (Chairs). Bildungswissenschaften: Wieso, weshalb, warum? Ausprägung, Bedeutung und Veränderung subjektiver Theorien im Lehramt [Symposium]. 8. Tagung der Gesellschaft für Empirische Bildungsforschung (GEBF), Potsdam, Deutschland.
Wittwer, J., Voss, T., & Ernst, H. (2019, August 12–16). Are educational sciences too soft? Student teachers’ attitudes towards educational sciences [Poster presentation]. 18th Biennial Conference of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI), Aachen, Germany.
CLiP
Classroom Management im Sportunterricht
Classroom Management in Physical Education
The research project aims to develop an intervention to promote evidence-based thinking and teaching for the core practice of “preventing disruptions in physical education” within the area of classroom management, and to support it with scientific results. The intervention for preservice physical education teachers will provide targeted instructional support to build the knowledge necessary for the successful implementation of this core practice. Additionally, the beliefs of preservice physical education teachers regarding the core practice, as well as other didactic phenomena such as sport-related mindsets, will be addressed. The effectiveness of the intervention in promoting knowledge and beliefs will be tested in experimental studies with pre- and post-measurements of the outcomes. The sustainability of the intervention effects will also be examined in a longitudinal study. This study will investigate whether the developed measures to promote evidence-based thinking are significant in the long term for the further development of teachers’ competence in the second and third phases of teacher education, as well as for teaching practices and the health of teachers.
Contact: Prof. Dr. Thamar Voss, Dr. Johanna Korte, Prof. Dr. Jörg Wittwer
Funding: Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg
Cooperation:
Prof. Dr. Timo Leuders (Freiburg University of Education)
Prof. Dr. Katharina Loibl (Freiburg University of Education)
Jun.Prof. Dr. Anne-Christin Roth (Freiburg University of Education)
Prof. Dr. Ingo Wagner (University of Freiburg, Department of Sport and Sport Science)