Future Education Conference Program - Didactic Workshops
![A photo of a teacher using multimedia resources, such as a smartboard, projector, or educational software, to make the lesson interactive and engaging for students, bokeh, Teacher' Generative AI ©Катерина Євтехова - stock.adobe.com Teacher at the Smartboard ©Катерина Євтехова - stock.adobe.com](https://static.uni-graz.at/fileadmin/_processed_/4/9/csm_uni-graz-future-education-lehrerin-smartboard_0e3deed71d.jpg)
Didactic workshops: This format is used to present teaching materials that have been developed on the basis of research, tested in practice or evaluated in empirical studies. These will be offered as part of a "market" at the conference and made available to interested parties for 90 minutes in supervised form. This offer is particularly aimed at practitioners and teachers.
WS 1: Material development for low-threshold women's courses in the "Migrant women simply strong in everyday life" program
The MiA course is a low-threshold integration offer from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees in Germany to support women in arriving and settling in Germany, to provide them with initial German language skills and to empower them. The low-threshold teaching approach in the MiA courses relies heavily on needs-based and participant-oriented work, which makes it difficult to use textbooks.
As part of the four-year project, the Institute for Intercultural Communication Berlin (IIK Berlin) developed a didactic concept for teaching and learning materials for the MiA courses. The materials developed in a participatory process have been prepared in MiA course packages 1 and 2 and are accessible to the professional group of MiA course instructors.
The challenge here was to promote the acquisition of oral competence in the classroom. Not only thematically, but also methodically, by making participants aware of their oral competence as a resource and using it to support learning. These course volumes offer MiA course instructors knowledge and guidance on topics such as raising awareness of one's own cultural background, life planning, but also on focal points such as learning to learn. They contribute to the pedagogical education of MiA course instructors and thus to their professionalization.
Our article presents units from the MiA course package 1 and 2, the handbook for courses in the "Migrant women simply strong in everyday life" program. The special conditions of the target group are described in a practical way and the methodological and didactic approaches with a focus on learning in the courses are discussed.
WS 2: Sound psychological findings as a basis for (digital) teaching design
In our constantly changing (increasingly digital) world, psychological insights are of great importance in order to design evidence-informed teaching and learning in higher education and to increase the chances of success of didactic decisions and innovations. Teachers, like all people, have an everyday psychological understanding in which they interpret, perceive and interact with the behavior and experiences of their students. Through didactic design, teachers want to align their courses as well as possible with the learning of their students. However, so-called learning types (visual, auditory, haptic, etc.) are widely used to differentiate between learners, which is a myth. But which student characteristics are relevant for instructional design?
Scientific psychology offers a precise and systematic assessment of psychological phenomena such as motivation, intelligence, social perception, expertise, memory, etc. and researches these in the field of teaching, among others. The working group "Psychology and Teaching-Learning Research" of the German Association for University Didactics (dghd) supports lecturers through the targeted transfer of psychological concepts and findings to specific issues of university teaching and thus contributes to the scientific foundation of university teaching.
As part of the didactic workshop, we present exemplary highlights of our work results, which can be used as learning material in university or subject didactic workshops or as input for teaching-related university discussions: e.g.
- Learning-related effectiveness of online, blended learning (incl. flipped classroom) or presence?
- Internal sub-processes in learning in the context of our memory and the students' ability to control themselves as a basis for teaching design
- Designing learning materials (video, text, podcast, VR/AR) to promote learning.
Our publicly accessible Miroboard miro.com/app/board/uXjVNed1Q58=/ and our website www.dghd.de/community/arbeitsgruppen/ag-psychologie-und-lehr-lern-forschung/ offer initial insights into the diverse links between psychology and university didactics.
WS 3: Discrimination-critical reflection on domestic and foreign school placements for student teachers: Experiences and findings from preparatory and accompanying seminars
As part of the "Diversity Contexts in Teacher Education" (DiCoT) project, students are prepared for their first school internship in Germany or abroad. The subject of this preparation is the reflection of diversity and professional action in diversity contexts. At the conference, concepts, experiences and research findings from these courses are presented for discussion in a group format. The preparation and support of the students is based on the anti-bias approach. Bringing together the perspectives of students planning their internship in Germany and abroad proved to be a challenge in the seminar work. Using the example of the concept of culture and an exercise from anti-bias work, we would like to invite you to a joint discussion on how both perspectives can be profitably brought together in the further development of the seminars.
We will present an anti-bias exercise adapted to the university context with the title "My (cultural) background". In this exercise, participants are invited to reflect on and share what socio-economic circumstances have shaped their opportunities, perspectives and attitudes. We have used this exercise in seminars for student teachers, especially to relativize nationally shaped ideas of the concept of "culture" and at the same time to promote critical self-reflection among students.
WS 4: Designing inclusive lessons: Ways to promote collaborative learning
In order to be able to design inclusive lessons, it is necessary to provide learning materials that allow learning on a common subject and at the same time take into account the different ability levels of the children. It is also essential to strengthen children's participation by incorporating their feedback into cooperative lesson development. In the didactic workshop, we would like to present two possibilities for inclusive lesson design that have been developed on the basis of these two approaches.
(1) Differentiated learning materials (DiLu, RegioDiff, RegiNaDiff, Kinderleicht): in various projects, our department has developed and evaluated differentiated teaching materials that take vocabulary work into account and promote reading comprehension (e.g. Seifert et al., 2015; Paleczek et al., 2022). The materials for reading and subject lessons (2nd-5th grade) are enriched with cooperative learning elements and can be used in print and in a digital learning environment.
(2) Inclusive Inquiry: Teams of three teachers and nine child researchers plan an inclusive lesson together in order to implement, observe, discuss and adapt it. Through dialog, ideas are developed on how all children can be included.
Using these two different approaches, possibilities for inclusive lesson design are demonstrated and can be tried out in the didactic workshop.
WS 5: Let's talk about classism! Free educational resources from the project "Habitus.Macht.Bildung"
Social background plays a major role in "educational success" in Austria compared to other OECD countries, which is why Austria has a national strategy on the social dimension in higher education. However, it is not only university lecturers who are called upon to acquire critical knowledge about social inequality, in particular classism, and to reflect critically on their own actions and organizational structures in terms of classism. Such skills must also be demanded of prospective teachers, making the examination of habitus, power and education a topic for teacher training.
As part of the didactic workshop, Open Educational Resources (OER) consisting of theory cards and exercises will be presented, which are intended to initiate a reflexive, research-based examination of education and social inequality and can be used in work with all students, especially student teachers, but also with university lecturers. They were developed as part of the project "Habitus.Macht.Bildung - Transformation durch Reflexion", which was carried out at the Institute for Educational Research and Teacher Education at the University of Graz from 2019 to 2021. With the help of social science and participatory methods, the experiences and perceptions of student teachers with regard to social inequalities (in educational pathways) were researched in the course of courses in educational science fundamentals (BWG). Student experiences of discrimination and privilege as well as socio-analytical and literary treatments of educational experiences and social background were analyzed, combined with theoretical discussions on education and social inequality and prepared as OER. They support the examination of how social inequalities are (re)produced in educational institutions and what pedagogical consequences are possible.
WS 6: The forest of the future: Performative impulses for visionary science education
What will the forest of the future sound like? What scents could permeate it? How will the forest move? Will the bark beetle still exist in 50 years? This article presents a didactic approach to introducing future narratives using performative methods.
Futures literacy is considered a key competence by UNESCO. Alternative teaching approaches are needed to teach 21st century skills and different future narratives to learners. The integration of creativity and multi-sensory learning enables an aesthetic approach to scientific aspects and promotes a deeper understanding of them.
Performative methods of drama and theater pedagogy offer the possibility of a cognitive and emotional engagement with future narratives. Their participatory nature encourages a more creative and innovative approach to the future and the adoption of a critical stance.
Drama and theater pedagogy link different discourses and are particularly suitable for promoting futures literacy at primary level due to their interdisciplinary nature.
As part of a research setting on the topic "Forest of the Future", pupils from a 3rd/4th grade elementary school explored the research question "How does the forest function as a habitat and how can it be successful in the future?" through a fairy tale, research and future workshop.
The future workshop, created in collaboration with the Interdisciplinary Network for Science Education Lower Austria (INSE), aims to deepen understanding of science, particularly through cultural perspectives.
With the help of performative approaches, they were able to empathize with a future scenario, have subjective physical experiences and participate emotionally.
The drama and theater pedagogical framework enabled the learners to approach a scientific topic creatively; to experience themselves as researchers and to create a play.
WS 7: Magical Musical Mat - An interactive design for symmetrical communication with non-verbal people on the autism spectrum
One of the most profound difficulties that non-verbal people on the autism spectrum encounter in their interactions with speaking others concerns the "problem of double empathy". This means that both interaction partners find it difficult to adapt to each other's world of understanding and feelings. Traditional communication approaches, such as the use of 'supported communication' and corresponding materials, hardly address this and create an asymmetrical communication relationship, as the means and their meanings are predetermined and have to be learned along the way. The design presented here is based on the practices and resources of autistic people. The Magical Musical Mat (MMM) was developed as part of a study that sheds light on the natural phenomenon of "interactive voicing", an effective way of communicating with autistic people. It shifts the traditional emphasis on language to the fundamental role of the body in autistic communication by creating an innovative interactive environment that combines interpersonal touch with musical sounds. In this way, meanings are not predetermined, as in aided communication, but created by the communication partners themselves in the interaction.
This has so far shown how children assert their autonomy by exploring at their own pace and discovering sensory characteristics. When interpersonal touch is emphasized, parents and other caregivers can be introduced to children's sensory activities: Children's stimuli can be tuned into, so that by joining in, their expressiveness has been encouraged, helping to shape extended, evolving patterns of repetitive cycles. The following interaction can then build symmetrically on this.
The didactic workshop provides the opportunity to try out the MMM.
WS 1: Knowing where children are in their learning process: Diagnostic procedures for assessing language and reading skills in primary school and kindergarten
Individual support is necessary in learning groups with a high level of diversity, but often presents teachers with challenges. Diagnostic competence is crucial for individually supportive teaching (Helmke, 2009) and contributes to teachers' greater self-efficacy (Bosse et al., 2015), but also to being able to respond to pupils' needs. Educational diagnostics should be objective, valid and reliable (Helmke, 2009), which can be made possible by standardized instruments that meet these criteria.
For the assessment of reading and language skills, which undoubtedly have a major influence on children's academic careers and educational success, a number of procedures (including FLT I and II: Early Reading Ability Test, DiLe-D: Differentiated Reading Test Decoding, GraLeV: Grazer Leseverständnistest, GraWo: Grazer Wortschatztest, GraF GruS: Grammatikfähigkeiten Gruppenscreening) have been developed, which enable the identification of children with difficulties, but in particular also the derivation of support measures in kindergarten and primary school. As part of the didactic workshop, these methods will be presented to interested parties, possible applications in the classroom will be discussed and implications for supporting pupils will be discussed.
WS 2: Can you make erasers from platypus wool? A web-based course to promote text competence in dealing critically with fake news
The "education of the future" (future education) requires learners to be prepared for the challenges of digital change: In the 21st century, students have 24/7 access to digital texts, which they encounter primarily in social media and which spread much more rapidly than in analog form (cf. Kozyreva et al. 2020). However, this sheer endless abundance of information often lacks epistemic quality, as there are no gatekeepers to filter and check it (cf. Metzger/Flanagin 2015; Schicker 2022). For "the education of tomorrow", learners must therefore also have the skills to recognize false information in texts and refute it in discourse.
The Erasmus+ project Fictional Science (FiSci) is therefore developing a web-based course to promote text skills in dealing critically with fake news for secondary levels I and II and testing it with 600 learners with German as a first, second and foreign language. Learners are first sensitized to false information in texts and its linguistic and content-related characteristics. They then learn about sourcing and corroboration to check information in texts and can use the knowledge gained from this when they use a linguistic support structure to refute false information in written form. What is particularly didactically innovative here is that the confrontation with false information is based on didactically constructed fake news texts. This enables learners to concentrate on acquiring skills to identify misinformation without being exposed to the harmful influences of real fake news or being distracted by preconceived opinions (worldview-backfire effect) (cf. Cook/Lewandowsky/Ecker et al. 2017).
WS 3: Digital reading promotion with LeOn (Reading Room Online)
In the didactic workshop, we will introduce participants to LeOn (Reading Room Online): a web-based application for systematic reading promotion for second to sixth grade. With LeOn, established reading promotion measures such as reading aloud and multiple reading methods, reading animation methods, reading strategy training and literature teaching methods (Rosebrock & Nix, 2020) can be carried out with digital support. Findings from the IQB Education Trend 2021 (Stanat et al. 2022) and the IGLU study 2016 (Hußmann et al. 2017) show that such measures are necessary.
In the workshop, we will present LeOn as a "house of reading": participants will test the digital rooms for tried-and-tested reading promotion methods, e.g. reading aloud tandems in the tandem room, reading along and creating reading aloud samples for the teacher in the karaoke room, the studio for creating your own radio plays and the possibilities for literary learning in the task room. Participants will also get an insight into the LeOn digital library. Here, pupils have access to an extensive range of reading texts at different levels of difficulty. Some of the texts are recorded for synchronous reading at different speeds. The texts are didactically selected and come from projects such as DiLu (Prof. Gasteiger-Klicpera), FiLBY (Prof. Schilcher), VERA 3 (Prof. Krelle) as well as collaborations with Prof. Rosebrock and the HarperCollins publishing house.
For the development of LeOn, Chemnitz University of Technology cooperated with the Ministry of Schools and Education of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. During development, the application was piloted with around 900 learners and around 50 teachers. Since fall 2023, LeOn has been available free of charge to all primary and lower secondary schools in North Rhine-Westphalia at www.leon-nrw.de. A transfer to other states can be made possible.
WS 4: An interdisciplinary view of risk, uncertainty and modeling
The BMBF project siMINT (Understanding complex STEM topics: Using simulations to promote skills for the 21st century) is dedicated to promoting risk literacy, modeling skills and skills in dealing with uncertainty in our students. From the perspectives of biology, mathematics and computer science didactics, siMINT is investigating how these competencies can be promoted as future skills with the help of simulations. Evidence-based teaching concepts are being developed as part of the project and will be presented in the didactic workshop.
Firstly, a teaching sequence to promote risk competence will be presented, which will take place in mathematics lessons with cross-references to biology. The unit focuses on HIV self-tests, which have only been approved in Germany since 2018 and where the interpretation of the package insert typically triggers blatant misconceptions about what a positive test result really means. Although these tests detect almost all infected people and correctly deliver a negative result even in a high proportion of non-infected people, a positive test result in a low-risk patient is not necessarily a cause for concern. Suitable simulations are used in class to work out the relationships between the various test parameters. References to biology are made, for example, in order to work out that the basic probability of being infected with HIV is very strongly influenced by individual behavior.
Materials at the intersection of biology and computer science lessons will also be presented, in which pupils work on "simple" topics (e.g. osmosis), "complicated" issues (e.g. the spread of an infectious disease using the example of measles) and "complex" challenges (e.g. the effects of climate change on ecosystems such as the Baltic Sea), acquiring not only modeling skills but also skills in dealing with uncertainty.
WS 5: Lubo-les: A preventive training to promote social-emotional skills of pupils with reading difficulties in elementary school
At primary school age, reading difficulties often occur together with social-emotional difficulties. However, there are currently no intervention programs in German-speaking countries that specifically address the social-emotional skills of pupils with reading difficulties. However, this is required in order to provide comprehensive support for pupils (Hendren et al., 2018).
The Lubo-LRS cooperation project (University of Cologne, 2022), which is being jointly implemented by the University of Cologne, the Intercantonal University of Applied Sciences Zurich and the University of Graz, aims to evaluate a prevention program that has been developed to meet this requirement. This article presents the "Lubo-les" prevention program, which is based on the evaluated "Lubo from Space" program (Hillenbrand et al., 2022). The aim is to show how the promotion of social-emotional skills can be implemented to complement the promotion of reading skills in the first years of school.
The areas of problem-solving skills, emotion regulation and self-efficacy of pupils with reading difficulties are focused on using challenging situations in everyday school life in the first years of school. The choice of challenging situations is based on a scoping review and interviews conducted by reading and spelling therapists with children. The prevention program was evaluated as part of a controlled longitudinal study in the second grade (10/2022-10/2023).
WS 6: Interlocking the teaching of research skills and data collection: A semester-accompanying workbook for students
A research-based approach is increasingly seen as central to the training of teachers (Groß Ophoff & Rott, 2017). This motivates the creation of new teaching methods to adequately prepare prospective teachers for their future role.
With this in mind, a one-semester university course was designed as a service-learning experience for student teachers. The aim is to strengthen students' research skills and dispositions by confronting them with real-life challenges in everyday school life and working on them in a research-based way (Froehlich et al., 2021).
A key tool in this process is a specially developed interactive workbook. It serves as a structuring aid that enables students to engage with the learning content in greater depth through targeted tasks and the provision of relevant information. In addition, the workbook integrates reflection points that include both quantitative scales from scientific research and qualitative reflections in order to promote critical reflection and self-assessment on the part of the students.
The effectiveness of this approach will be examined in an international mixed-method longitudinal study. The workbook will not only be used as a central teaching tool, but also as an innovative data collection instrument that provides deep insights into the students' learning process. The methodical use of the workbook is based on the structure of a diary study.
In this didactic workshop, the workbook will be discussed in its dual function as a teaching and research tool in order to explore new ways of designing and evaluating research methods seminars.
WS 7: Observing writing with different tools (OER)
A wide variety of writing tools are used in everyday writing activities, such as the development of (pre-)scientific texts. The choice of writing tool is often linked to the specific writing occasion - for example, spontaneous ideas are quickly recorded with a pen and notebook to hand or a first draft is revised on the computer using word processing programs. Due to individual routines and preferences for using certain tools for certain writing occasions, a direct comparison of the different writing tools is difficult. As a result, their potential importance for the writing process often remains unconscious or even hidden, for example when the smartphone is hardly used as a frequently used writing tool in the social media context when writing (pre-)scientific texts.
The teaching materials presented in the didactic workshops are aimed at observing one's own writing activity when writing with different tools and reflecting further on the potential that different writing tools can have for one's own writing process. Everyday, routinized writing activities are disrupted by carrying out a constant writing activity in the form of freewriting with different writing tools. Subsequently, brief observation protocols are drawn up along the theory-guided question categories 'gaze behavior', 'writing speed' and 'writing flow', which opens up a basis for comparison for writing with different tools. The reflection initiated by the questions about which writing tools can be used profitably in which "stages of writing development" (Bereiter 2012, p. 403) makes it possible to better understand and further professionalize one's own writing.
The teaching materials provided as OER were developed and tested as part of the author's master's thesis and can be tried out independently by the participants during the conference. The results of the study will be presented during the poster presentation.