Elsbeth Stern

• ETH Zurich

While formative assessment is a widely valued instructional approach to support meaningful learning, putting it into classroom practice remains a challenge, also because the time resources required may conflict with other goals. In a cluster-randomized controlled intervention study with 29 teachers and 604 students (mean age 15.6 years) at secondar...

This study used a quasirandomized within-classroom design to investigate whether prior knowledge about physics gained in elementary school prepares students for future learning in related content areas in secondary school. A total of 433 children (intervention group) received four basic curriculum units on physics from their elementary school teach...

This study used a quasi-randomized within-classroom design to investigate whether prior knowledge about physics gained in elementary school prepares students for future learning in related content areas in secondary school. A total of 433 children (intervention group) received four basic curriculum units on physics from their elementary school teac...

How can we promote the construction of intelligent knowledge that facilitates the transfer of knowledge to new situations? This article gives an overview of the current state of empirical research on methods of cognitively activating teaching that promote conceptual change and flexible application of knowledge in new situations. “Cognitively activa...

Conceptual knowledge is often investigated using sum scores on a test. Yet, conceptual knowledge is characterized by relations (Goldwater & Schalk, 2016), wherefore network analysis is suitable to model the relations of students’ answers. We investigated answers on a concept inventory on magnetism from 2714 students from different school levels bef...

We explored the mediating role of prior knowledge on the relation between intelligence and learning proportional reasoning. What students gain from formal instruction may depend on their intelligence, as well as on prior encounters with proportional concepts. We investigated whether a basic curriculum unit on the concept of density promoted student...

This study examined how working memory (WM) and mathematics performance are related among students entering mathematics-intensive undergraduate STEM programs (N = 317). Among students of mechanical engineering and math-physics, we addressed two questions: (1) Do verbal and visuospatial WM differ in their relation with three measures of mathematics...

Representational competence is essential for the acquisition of conceptual understanding in physics. It enables the interpretation of diagrams, graphs, and mathematical equations, and relating these to one another as well as to observations and experimental outcomes. In this study, we present the initial validation of a newly developed cross-contex...

This study examined individual differences in spatial abilities of architecture students. Students at different educational levels were assessed on spatial ability tests that varied in their domain-specificity to architecture, with the hypothesis that larger differences between beginner and advanced students will emerge on more domain-specific test...

Concerns about gender-equality in education persist in spite of substantial historical progress. We review some of the major issues occupying researchers today, while considering findings across cultures and nations. We discuss patterns of gender gaps based on cross-national assessments, research on gender stereotypes and biases in the classroom, w...

This is a book chapter preprint: Ziegler, E., & Stern, E. (in press). Der Einfluss von Erbe und Umwelt auf Der Einfluss von Erbe und Umwelt auf Bildung, Intelligenz und Lernen. In V. Müller- Oppliger, & G. Weigand (Eds.), Handbuch Begabung. Weinheim Basel: Beltz Verlag. https://www.beltz.de/fachmedien/paedagogik/produkte/produkt_produktdetails/42...

Teacher-directed and self-directed learning have been compared across various contexts. Depending on the settings and the presentation of material, mixed benefits are found; the specific circumstances under which either condition is advantageous are unclear. We combined and reanalyzed data from two experimental studies investigating the effects of...

Worked examples support learning. However, if they introduce easy‐to‐confuse concepts or principles, specific ways of providing worked examples may influence their effectiveness. Multiple worked examples can be introduced blocked (i.e., several for the same principle) or interleaved (i.e., switching between principles), and can be presented sequent...

Individual differences in intelligence already show in early childhood, and they stabilize in early adulthood. Although it is uncontested among scientists that variance in intelligence can be traced back to genetic differences, favorable environmental conditions are required in order to exploit an individual's genetic potential. State‐of‐the‐art mo...

- Spatial ability is considered a key ability for STEM disciplines and has been correspondingly studied extensively, not least by the development of a vast number of psychometric tests. Based on the assumption that spatial ability is also central for architecture, the present paper presents an ongoing research on the development of a new test, spec...

Intervention studies based on randomized control trials represent a powerful tool for yielding insights into educational and developmental mechanisms. A question that researchers face is according to which standards or framework they should judge the size of an intervention’s effects in order to determine its (cost-) effectiveness. Particularly in...

The relative importance of different factors in the development of human skills has been extensively discussed. Research on expertise indicates that focused practice may be the sole determinant of skill, while intelligence researchers underline the relative importance of abilities at even the highest level of skill. There is indeed a large body of...

Zusammenfassung In der Lehrerinnen-und Lehrerbildung trifft man auf einen Disziplinendschungel. Man begegnet der Allgemeinen Didaktik, der Fachdidaktik, der Lehr-und Lernforschung, der Pädagogik und der Pädagogischen Psychologie bis hin zur Neuropsychologie des Lehrens und Lernens oder der Neurodidaktik. Wir denken in diesem Kommentar darüber nach,...

A wide-spread stereotype that influences women’s paths into STEM (or non-STEM) fields is the implicit association of science and mathematics with “male” and with requiring high levels of male-associated “brilliance.” Recent research on such “field-specific ability beliefs” has shown that a high emphasis on brilliance in a specific field goes along...

Die Lernforschung hat in den letzten Jahrzehnten kognitiv aktivierende Methoden entwickelt und evaluiert, die das sinnstiftende Lernen im Unterricht fördern. Diese haben sich insbesondere in den MINT-Fächern als wirksam erwiesen, weil hier das konzeptuelle Verständnis eine grosse Hürde darstellt. Im ersten Teil des Artikels werden fünf Lernformen z...

Menschen im Jugendalter können bereits auf umfangreiche Lebenserfahrung zurückblicken. Sofern sie in entwickelten Ländern aufwachsen, haben sie zwei Drittel ihres Lebens in Schulen verbracht, die institutionelles Lernen erfordern. Daneben hatten sie in ihrem sozialen Umfeld umfangreiche Möglichkeiten, Lebensformen von Erwachsenen kennenzulernen, we...

In der Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung trifft man auf einen Disziplinendschungel. Man begegnet der Allgemeinen Didaktik, der Fachdidaktik, der Lehr- und Lernforschung, der Pädagogik und der Pädagogischen Psychologie bis hin zur Neuropsychologie des Lehrens und Lernens oder der Neurodidaktik. Wir denken in diesem Kommentar darüber nach, was diese Dis...

Previous research has shown that psychometrically assessed cognitive abilities are predictive of achievements in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) even in highly selected samples. Spatial ability, in particular, has been found to be crucial for success in STEM, though its role relative to other abilities has been shown mostly...

In a quasi-experimental classroom study, we longitudinally investigated whether inquiry-based, content-focused physics instruction improves students' ability to apply the control-of-variables strategy, a domain-general experimentation skill. Twelve third grade elementary school classes (Mdn age = 9 years, N = 189) were randomly assigned to receive...

Erbe ist viel, aber nicht alles. Ein angeborenes intellektuelle Potenzial kann durch kulturelles Lernen ausgeschöpft werden. Elsbeth Stern und ich führen grundlegende Begrifflichkeiten in der Intelligenzforschung und der Erbe-Umwelt-Debatte ein. Der Artikel ist in der Zeitschrift "Psychoscope" der Förderation der Schweizer Psychologinnen und Psycho...

Knowledge representations that result from practicing problem solving can be expected to differ from knowledge representations that emerge from explicit verbalizing of principles and rules. We examined the degree to which the two types of learning improve problem-solving knowledge and verbal explanation knowledge in classroom instruction. We presen...

Physics educators today face two major challenges: supporting the acquisition of a solid base of conceptual knowledge and reducing the persisting gender gap. In the present quasi-experimental study, we investigated the potential of physics instruction that is enriched with evidence-based cognitively activating methods, such as inventing with contra...

We examined the predictive value and interplay of elementary school students’ understanding of the control-of-variables strategy, a domain-general experimentation skill, and their prior content knowledge for subsequent conceptual knowledge acquisition and conceptual change. Trained teachers provided N = 1809 first to sixth graders with 15 lessons o...

Instruction often starts with an explanation of a concept or principle before students are presented with problems to be solved. Recent research indicates that reversing this widely used tell-and-practice sequence (T&P) so that exploratory problem-solving precedes the instructional explanation (i.e., PS-I) might be more beneficial. We aimed to repl...

To the best of our knowledge, the genetic foundations that guide human brain development have not changed fundamentally during the past 50,000 years. However, because of their cognitive potential, humans have changed the world tremendously in the past centuries. They have invented technical devices, institutions that regulate cooperation and compet...

Deiglmayr, A., & Stern, E. (2017). Individuelle Förderung von Lernprozessen: Kommentar. In U. Hartmann, M. Hasselhorn, & A. Gold (Hrsg.), Entwicklungsläufe verstehen – Kinder mit Bildungsrisiken wirksam fördern. Forschungsergebnisse des Frankfurter IDeA-Zentrums (S. 403–410). Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.

Concept inventories, constructed based on an analysis of students’ thinking and their explanations of scientific situations, serve as diagnostics for identifying misconceptions and logical inconsistencies and provide data that can help direct curricular reforms. In the current project, we distributed the Biological Concepts Instrument (BCI) to 17-1...

Supplemental methods and results. Description of the Biological Concepts Instrument (BCI). German version of the BCI. EVAMAR. Students’ performance comparisons. Fig A.: Percent of correct answers. Results on all BCI questions. (PDF)

The dataset contains all data of the present study. (PDF)

The kinematics concept test (KCT) is a multiple-choice test designed to evaluate students’ conceptual understanding of kinematics at the high school level. The test comprises 49 multiple-choice items about velocity and acceleration, which are based on seven kinematic concepts and which make use of three different representations. In the first part...

Education economics has quickly risen as a research area over the last decades, with a major focus on the “return on investment” perspective. Quality of education obviously matters for societies’ economic success and welfare—an insight that has stimulated the search for worthwhile educational investments ever since. In modern societies, education i...

In Switzerland, about 20% of the secondary school students attend the highest track of the educational system (Gymnasium), which is supposed to prepare for university education. Access to this track takes place between the ages of 12 and 14 and is based on achievement in core subjects at the end of elementary school or in early secondary school. Th...

We examined the predictive value and interplay of elementary school students’ understanding of the control-of-variables strategy, a domain-general experimentation skill, and their prior content knowledge for subsequent conceptual knowledge acquisition and conceptual change. Trained teachers provided N = 1809 first to sixth graders with 15 lessons o...

The present study examined gender-specific physics underachievement to identify highly intelligent students who perform below their intellectual potential in physics. The sample consisted of 316 students (182 girls) from higher secondary school (Gymnasium) in Switzerland (age M = 16.25 years, SD = 1.12 years). In a multiple group latent profile ana...

Tremendous variation in elementary school children's mathematical achievement can partly be traced back to differences in early domain-specific quantitative competencies. While previous research mainly focused on numerical magnitude representation and counting, we tested the long-term effects of relational quantitative reasoning. Before children (N...

Unless directly addressed, misconceptions can persist even in particularly capable students attending elite programs. To explore the presumptions that undergraduates of two distinguished Swiss universities have common biological misconceptions, we have used the Biological Concepts Instrument (BCI) in a pre-post-test approach [1]. We find that, afte...

Enabling learners to transfer knowledge about formal principles to new problems is a major aim of science and mathematics education, which, however, is notoriously difficult to reach. Previous research advocates different approaches of how to introduce principles to foster the transfer of knowledge about formal principles. One approach suggests tea...

The dataset contains all data of the present study. (SAV)

Contrasted comparisons are an effective means of concept learning. Many studies have investigated the effects of comparisons in self-learning settings. However, because direct instruction remains a widespread instructional method, we adapted self-learning materials from a previous experiment that demonstrated the benefits of a contrasted introducti...

Zusammenfassung. Das Konzept der psychometrischen Intelligenz ist in der Öffentlichkeit sowie auch in Teilen der wissenschaftlichen Psychologie umstritten. Warum Intelligenz so große Abwehrreaktionen auslöst und wie die Begründungen für diese zum Stand der Intelligenzforschung stehen, wird in diesem Artikel behandelt. Dabei behandeln wir drei weit...

Elsbeth Stern weighs up two studies probing the idea of the brain as the body's servant.

In a longitudinal study based on an intervention-control design with altogether 283 elementary school children we focus on the relationship between general scientific thinking skills and the acquisition of content-specific concepts in physics. Seven third-grade classes got an intensive inquiry-based instruction on four physics curricula on the topi...

Science education aims at developing students' knowledge of scientific concepts and principles. However, students differ in their prior knowledge and cognitive skills and thus follow different learning pathways. We examined whether and how experimentation skills predict elementary students' pathways of conceptual knowledge development in science ed...

Inhalt: Vorwort (W. Diehl, S. 5-8) - 1. Das Konstrukt der Intelligenz (D. H. Rost, S. 11-45) - 2. Intelligent geboren oder schlau gemacht? Falsch gestellte Fragen und bessere Antworten (F. M. Spinath, S. 47-71) - 3. Intelligenz, Hochbegabung und Persönlichkeit (G. Roth, S. 73-116) - 4. Von der Synapse in die Schule? Lehren heißt, das Lernen versteh...

Intelligence test scores can account for achievement differences in many content areas to a considerable extent. An individual's intelligence quotient results from complex interactions between genes and environmental stimulation, foremost schooling. The amount of variance in intelligence to be explained by genes is the higher the more successful a...

Students studying algebra often make mistakes because of superficial similarities between addition and multiplication problems. In two experiments, we investigated whether these errors can be prevented by presenting addition and multiplication problems in such a way that students are encouraged to compare the problems at a deeper level. In Experime...

Stellen wir uns jeweils 20 neun- bis zehnjährige Kinder in drei Klassen A, B, C der vierten Jahrgangsstufe einer Grundschule vor, die von drei unterschiedlichen Mathematiklehrpersonen unterrichtet werden. Die Schüler/innen beherrschen bereits die numerischen Grundoperationen Addition und Subtraktion im kleinen Zahlenbereich, sollen nun aber erstmal...

Immer wieder wird von verschiedenen Personen die provokante These vertreten, dass ganze Nationen verdummen würden (z. B. Herrnstein und Murray, The bell curve. Intelligence and class structure in American Life, 1994; Sarrazin, Deutschland schafft sich ab. Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen, 2010). Diese These wird dazu benutzt, weitreichende gese...

Biology education has been moving away from learning large numbers of facts to the understanding of underlying concepts. Various reports describe important misconceptions of basic ideas in biology held by many students. Effective learning requires the identification and subsequent change of these misconceptions. To identify frequent misconceptions,...

Unterricht entspricht einem komplexen Zusammenspiel zwischen dem Angebot der Lehrpersonen und dessen „Lernnutzung“ durch die Kinder (Helmke, 2006). Dabei haben sowohl die Qualität des unterrichtlichen Angebots, die in enger Beziehung zu den professionellen Kompetenzen der Lehrperson steht, als auch die psychischen, physischen und soziodemographisch...

Introduction: The aim of the present study was to probe electrophysiological effects of non-symbolic numerical processing in 20 children with mathematical learning disabilities (mean age = 99.2 months) compared to a group of 20 typically developing matched controls (mean age = 98.4 months). Methods: EEG data were obtained while children were tes...

The German cognitive science conference is an interdisciplinary event where researchers from different disciplines -- mainly from artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and anthropology -- and application areas -- such as eduction, clinical psychology, and human-machine interaction -- bring tog...

Education aims to equip learners with knowledge about principles that can be applied across a wide range of situations but often people do not recognize structural similarity between known cases and novel problems. Several approaches for designing learning materials to foster transfer of principles have been proposed including learning a generic in...

This paper explores the effect of classifiers on young children's conceptual structures. For this purpose we studied Mandarin Chinese- and German-speaking 3- and 5-year-olds on non-lexical classification, novel-noun label extension, and inductive inference of novel properties. Some effect of the classifier system was found in Chinese children, but...

Michael Schneider et Elsbeth Stern placent l’acquisition des connaissances au coeur du processus d’apprentissage, en notant cependant que la qualité des connaissances est aussi importante que la quantité et que le terme « connaissances » va bien au-delà des seules connaissances factuelles. Les auteurs font la synthèse de la perspective cognitive à...

Michael Schneider and Elsbeth Stern place knowledge acquisition at the very heart of the learning process, albeit that the quality of the knowledge is as necessary as the quantity and that "knowledge" should be understood much more broadly than (but including) knowing facts. They summarise the cognitive perspective through ten "cornerstones". Learn...

Sixty-six primary school children were selected, of which 21 scored low on a standardized math achievement test, 23 were normal, and 22 high achievers. In a numerical Stroop experiment, children were asked to make numerical and physical size comparisons on digit pairs. The effects of congruity and numerical distance were determined. All children ex...

Imagine the following scenario: An experienced teacher explains to a class of ten motivated and intelligent elementary school children that the earth is a sphere moving through space. The teacher uses simple, precise, and convincing wording. (S)he explains the similarities and differences between the earth, its moon and the sun. A week later the st...

Today, teachers and policy makers responsible for classroom practice and educational reform seek to base their decisions on empirical evidence rather than on opinions, fashions, and ideologies, as was too often the case in the past. Quite often, however, after having taken a closer look to findings from educational psychology and empirical learning...

Linking neuroscience to education is a long-term enterprise which could have a high pay-off in terms of understanding causal developmental mechanisms. However, the first requirement in this new field is for high-quality basic research, albeit informed by current understanding of developmental and educational processes. Neuroscience is showing us ho...

Interactions between conceptual and procedural knowledge influence the development of mathematical competencies. However, after decades of research, these interrelations are still under debate, and empirical results are inconclusive. The authors point out a source of these problems. Different kinds of knowledge and competencies only show up intertw...

To date, a number of studies have demonstrated the existence of mismatches between children's implicit and explicit knowledge at certain points in development that become manifest by their gestures and gaze orientation in different problem solving contexts. Stimulated by this research, we used eye movement measurement to investigate the development...

A number of mathematical concepts and computational procedures are linked to the inverse relation of addition and subtraction on an abstract mathematical level. In this discussion article for the special issue on subtraction-related principles, we suggest that the mainstream of research on inversion is conducted from a Knowledge Dissociation Perspe...

Applying Cognitive Science to Education . Thinking and Learning in Scientific and Other Complex Domains. By Frederick Reif . MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008. 489 pp. $38, £24.95. ISBN 9780262182638. Reif discusses how findings from cognitive science can help improve teaching and learning, especially science education (and, within that, physics educa...

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Neuroimaging studies have revealed a strong link between mental calculation and the angu- lar gyrus (AG) which has been interpreted to reflect arithmetic fact retrieval. Moreover, a stronger AG activation in individuals with higher mathematical competence has been reported. The present fMRI study investigates the specificity of the AG for arithmeti...

The number line estimation task captures central aspects of children's developing number sense, that is, their intuitions for numbers and their interrelations. Previous research used children's answer patterns and verbal reports as evidence of how they solve this task. In the present study we investigated to what extent eye movements recorded durin...

The assessment of cognitive abilities is critical in large-scale survey studies that aim at elucidating the longitudinal interplay between the individual’s cognitive potential and socio-economic variables. The format of such studies calls for assessment methods which can not only be administered economically but also display a high (psychometric) m...

Functional neuroimaging studies have revealed that parietal brain circuits subserve arithmetic problem solving and that their recruitment dynamically changes as a function of training and development. The present study investigated whether the brain activation during mental calculation is also modulated by individual differences in mathematical com...

Starting from controversies over the role of general individual characteristics (especially intelligence) for the attainment of expert performance levels, a comprehensive psychometric investigation of individual differences in chess expertise is presented. A sample of 90 adult tournament chess players of varying playing strengths (1311-2387 ELO) wa...