Knut Neumann

Kiel University | CAU · Department of Physics Education

Due to their versatility, conceptual maps are used in various educational settings and serve as tools that enable educators to comprehend students' knowledge construction. An essential component for analyzing a concept map is its structure, which can be categorized into three distinct types: spoke, network, and chain. Understanding the predominant...

Large language models have been shown to excel in many different tasks across disciplines and research sites. They provide novel opportunities to enhance educational research and instruction in different ways such as assessment. However, these methods have also been shown to have fundamental limitations. These relate, among others, to hallucinating...

This paper presents a teacher dashboard intervention study in secondary school practice involving teachers (n = 16) with their classes (n = 22) and students (n = 403). A quasi-experimental treatment-control group design was implemented to compare student learning outcomes between classrooms where teachers did not have access to the dashboard and cl...

One reason for the widespread use of the energy concept across the sciences is that energy analysis can be used to interpret the behavior of systems even if one does not know the particular mechanisms that underlie the observed behavior. By providing an approach to interpreting unfamiliar phenomena, energy provides a lens on phenomena that can set...

Background Teacher dashboards can help secondary school teachers manage online learning activities and inform instructional decisions by visualising information about class learning. However, when designing teacher dashboards, it is not trivial to choose which information to display, because not all of the vast amount of information retrieved from...

In den letzten Jahren wurde das Professionswissen (angehen- der) Lehrkräfte intensiv untersucht. Neben Aussagen zur inneren Struktur liegen auch Ergebnisse über den Zusammenhang zwischen Professionswissen, Performanz in prototypischen Handlungssituationen sowie Unterrichtserfolg vor. In diesen Ana- lysen hat sich gezeigt, dass insbesondere dem fach...

Digital learning technologies have grown increasingly important in physics education, partly enforced through the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, digital technologies allowed for continued teaching and learning of students even when schools were closed. While research in psychology and educational technology has yielded many insights into t...

Zusammenfassung In dieser Studie analysieren wir den Beitrag von Experimentalpraktika zur Entwicklung der professionellen Kompetenz angehender Lehrkräfte des Faches Physik. Experimentalpraktika verfolgen verschiedene Ziele, die sowohl das fachliche Lernen als auch die Entwicklung positiver motivationaler Orientierungen adressieren. Beide Aspekte si...

This study examines the impact of course quality on pre-service physics teachers' content knowledge (CK) development. Teachers' CK is one prerequisite to effective teaching. To support teachers in developing CK, the quality of higher education content courses plays a major role. Yet, models of course quality for higher education vary in their dimen...

Science education research has repeatedly revealed students' problems with understanding the energy concept, in particular, their understanding of potential energy. Newer research suggests that teaching students fields as a means to store potential energy may promote a more consistent understanding of the energy concept. Yet, it is presently unknow...

DESCRIPTION Energy is a concept that is central to all science disciplines and has a broader societal, economic, and political relevance beyond science. Energy is also fundamentally a physics concept and, accordingly, a core concept in physics instruction. Understanding energy is important both to those who are looking to become physicists as well...

DESCRIPTION Recent work physics education research has included a substantial focus on the importance of emphasizing a small set of core physics ideas over time and across contexts. Accordingly, standards documents increasingly emphasize the importance of core ideas such as energy, interactions, and waves. This emphasis on core ideas has been influ...

Learning Analytics are an academic field with promising usage scenarios for many educational domains. At the same time, learning analytics come with threats such as the amplification of historically grown inequalities. A range of general guidelines for more equity-focused learning analytics have been proposed but fail to provide sufficiently clear...

Zusammenfassung Seit 50 Jahren fokussiert die Zeitschrift Unterrichtswissenschaft auf die Erforschung von Fragen rund um das Lehren und Lernen, insbesondere in institutionalisierten Settings und im deutschsprachigen Raum. Der vorliegende Beitrag gibt einen Überblick darüber, welche Themen die Zeitschrift in den letzten 50 Jahren behandelt hat und w...

Addressing 21st century challenges, professionals competent in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) will be indispensable. A stronger individualisation of STEM learning environments is commonly considered a means to help more students develop the envisioned level of competence. However, research suggests that career aspirations...

Lay Description What is already known about this topic? Formative assessments are needed to test and monitor the development of learners’ knowledge throughout a unit to provide them with appropriate automated feedback. Constructed response items which require learners to formulate their own free‐text responses are well suited for testing their act...

Scientific modeling (SM) is a core practice of science and an important component of scientific literacy. Supporting students in developing the competence to construct, use, evaluate, and revise models is hence of particular relevance. While research has shown that spatial visualization (SV), a core component of spatial ability, is correlated with...

Zusammenfassung Der digitale Wandel stellt Lehrkräfte im Unterricht vor neue Anforderungen. Insbesondere Physiklehrkräfte müssen für das schulische Experimentieren nicht nur spezifische Messtechnik und Software nutzen können, sondern auch Grundkenntnisse des Programmierens beherrschen. Hinzu kommt, dass die (Physik-)Lehrkräfte sich in kurzen Zeitsp...

Zusammenfassung Die pandemiebedingten Maßnahmen haben den Wert der Digitalisierung im Bildungssektor deutlich gemacht. Digitale Unterrichtseinheiten auf Lehr-Lernplattformen können dazu einen entscheidenden Beitrag leisten. In der hier vorgelegten Studie werden Daten aus dem Sommer 2019 zu der affektiv-kognitiven Auseinandersetzung von naturwissens...

National educational standards stress the importance of science and mathematics learning for today’s students. However, across disciplines, students frequently struggle to meet learning goals about core concepts like energy. Digital learning environments enhanced with artificial intelligence hold the promise to address this issue by providing indiv...

Zusammenfassung Der vorliegende Beitrag präsentiert Erkenntnisse zur Wirksamkeit eines neuen Unterrichtsansatzes zur Einführung des Energiekonzeptes mit Hilfe von Feldern. Die zentrale Bedeutung des Energiekonzeptes in Physik steht im Kontrast zu den Verständnisschwierigkeiten der Schülerinnen und Schüler, insbesondere mit der potentiellen Energie....

This study identifies proficiency levels in pre-service physics teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and reveals how teacher education can promote transitions into higher proficiency. Teacher education plays a fundamental role in supporting pre-service teachers' PCK development. Proficiency levels are a powerful source when evaluating this...

Students' motivation plays an important role in successful science learning. However, motivation is a complex construct. Theories of motivation suggests that students' motivation must be conceptualized as a moti-vational system with numerous components that interact in complex ways and influence metacognitive processes such as self-evaluation. This...

The goal of science literacy for all underlies much of today’s K-12 science education (National Academies of Sciences [2016]. Science literacy: Concepts, contexts, and consequences. National Academies Press; Roberts, [2007]. Scientific literacy/science literacy. In S. K. Abell, & N. G. Lederman (Eds.), Handbook of research on science education (pp....

Verbal communication to relay information between students and the teacher, i.e., talk, lies at the heart of all science classrooms. This study investigated and began to characterize the neurological basis for the talk between science teachers and students in terms of speaker-listener coupling in a naturalistic setting. Speaker-listener coupling is...

Energy conservation is a fundamental concept in physics and across the sciences as it provides a lens for investigating a wide range of phenomena. Research into energy learning progressions has shown that a majority of students across K-12 struggle with energy conservation. These studies characterize students’ learning progressions as starting from...

This study examined the influence of higher education teacher training on student physics teachers' progression in content knowledge (CK). To become experts, student teachers must acquire both declarative and procedural-conditional CK. This progression is generally characterized by the prerequisite role of declarative knowledge, meaning that declar...

This study explores benefits of studying two related subjects, mathematics and physics, in teacher education. German teacher students study two subjects as a major, which allows for investigating how the development of content knowledge in one subject, mathematics, benefits students’ content knowledge in the other subject, physics. The sample inclu...

Zusammenfassung Universitäre Lerngelegenheiten sind zentral für den Erwerb des Fachwissens (FW) und fachdidaktischen Wissens (FDW) angehender Lehrkräfte. Die Unterschiede in Umfang und Inhalt der Lerngelegenheiten zwischen den Hochschulen sind jedoch groß. Am Beispiel des Physik-Lehramtsstudiums werden in dieser Studie verschiedene Studienstrukture...

Item banks are generally considered the basis of a new generation of educational measurement. In combination with specialized software, they can facilitate the computerized assembling of multiple pre-equated test forms. However, for advantages of item banks to become fully realized it is important that the item banks store a relatively large number...

In light of the replication crisis in psychology, null-hypothesis significance testing (NHST) and p-values have been heavily criticized and various alternatives have been proposed, ranging from slight modifications of the current paradigm to banning p-values from journals. Since the physics education research community often relies on quantitative...

Im Zentrum des Physikunterrichts stehen nach WAGENSCHEIN (1976) die Phänomene. Sie sollen den Ausgangspunkt für den sinn- haften Erwerb physikalischen Wissens bilden. WAGENSCHEIN lässt jedoch offen, wie solch sinnhaftes Lernen zu initiieren und in der Folge zu strukturieren ist. Der vorliegende Beitrag stellt am Beispiel einer sogenannten Leitfrage...

The world is rapidly changing, driven by ever-accelerating scientific progress (e.g. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in The future of education and skills: education 2030. OECD, 2018). The number of problems with conceptual or technological ties to science that societies as a whole as well as individuals in their everyd...

Die Physik ist eine Domäne, in der Engagement sowohl in der Schule als auch im Studium stark vom Geschlecht abhängt. Selbst physikinteressierte Schülerinnen entscheiden sich nur selten für ein Physikstudium und verlassen dieses überproportional häufig. Zur Förderung besonders interessierter Schülerinnen in Physik wurden außerschulische Enrichmentpr...

In a rapidly changing world, the ability to transfer one's knowledge is critical. Using the conceptualization of transfer as preparation for future learning, we investigated how students from two approaches to teaching energy that conceptualize energy differently, perform in a transfer task. We present first results that suggest that emphasizing en...

Scientific literacy is a central aim of science education. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) provides a measure of secondary students’ scientific literacy and reported science instruction in 72 countries. Researchers have analyzed PISA data to identify important relationships between science instruction and students’ science...

Knowledge-in-Use, i.e., the ability to apply what one has learned, is a major goal of education and involves the ability to transfer one's knowledge. While some general principles of knowledge transfer have been revealed, the literature is full of inconclusive results and it remains hard to predict successful transfer. However, research into expert...

In the sciences, energy is an important idea to get insight into phenomena, as energy can help to reveal hidden systems and processes. However, students commonly struggle to use energy ideas to interpret and explain phenomena. To support students in using energy ideas to interpret and explain phenomena, a range of different graphical representation...

Fünfzehnjährige in Deutschland erreichen bei PISA 2018 in den Naturwissenschaften 503 Punkte und liegen abermals über dem OECD-Durchschnitt. Deutschland gehört damit zu einer Gruppe von zwölf Staaten, die auf diesem Niveau den OECD-Spitzenstaaten Estland und Japan sowie Finnland, der Republik Korea und Kanada folgt. Im Vergleich zu PISA 2015, der a...

Der vorliegenden Artikel zielt darauf ab, qualitative Fähigkeitsniveaus für das fachdidaktische Wissen angehender Physiklehrkräfte zu formulieren. Neben dem Fachwissen und dem pädagogischen Wissen stellt das fachdidaktische Wissen den zentralen Bereich des Professionswissens von Lehrkräften dar, da er sowohl für die Qualität des Unterrichts als auc...

Energy is a central concept in science in every discipline and also an essential player in many of the issues facing people everywhere on the globe. However, studies have shown that by the end of K‐12 schooling, most students do not reach the level of understanding required to be able to use energy to make sense of a wide range of phenomena. Many r...

School instruction is critical for helping students use energy as a lens for making sense of phenomena, however, students often struggle to see the usefulness of energy analysis for interpreting the world around them. One reason for this may be an over-reliance on the idea of energy forms in introductory energy instruction, which may unintentionall...

Teachers’ professional knowledge is considered one of the most important predictors of instructional quality. According to Shulman, such professional knowledge includes content, pedagogical content and pedagogical knowledge. Although recent research shed some light on the structure of the dimensions of professional knowledge, little is known how te...

Modern science standards emphasize knowledge-in-use, i.e., connecting scientific practices with content. For knowledge to become usable in knowledge-in-use performances, students need well organized knowledge networks that allow them to activate and connect sets of relevant ideas across contexts, i.e. students need integrated knowledge. We conducte...

Energy is considered both as a disciplinary core idea and as a concept cutting across science disciplines. Most previous approaches studied progressing energy understanding in specific disciplinary contexts, while disregarding the relation of understanding across them. Hence, this study provides a systematic analysis of cross-disciplinary energy le...

Even graduate physics students have many misconceptions about basic wave optics phenomena. This suggests that there is much room for improvement of the traditional wave optics curriculum. An effective way for initiating a curriculum change is to reconsider and revise the expected learning outcomes and corresponding assessment instruments. By system...

This study investigates the relationships between professional knowledge, self-concept, and interest of pre-service physics teachers. In order to support student learning and interest development alike, teachers need a profound professional knowledge and respective motivational orienta-tions. Developing both professional knowledge and motivational...

On re-examining some of our earlier research into secondary science teachers’ PCK, as we reposition this work within the Refined Consensus Model (RCM) of PCK, we uncover the RCM is not only a model of PCK. We argue the RCM is also a model of science teachers’ professional competence and its development since the model identifies other elements of s...

Die Arbeit von Lehrkräften ist von vielfältigen Herausforderungen bei der Durchführung von qualitätsvollem Unterricht geprägt. Um diese Herausforderungen für die weitere persönliche Entwicklung produktiv zu nutzen, spielt die Reflexion der eigenen Praxiserfahrung eine zentrale Rolle. Zur Unterstützung der Reflexion angehender Lehrkräfte der naturwi...

ABSTRACT This study presents findings on the physics identity development of female students in the German Physics Olympiad who participated in an intervention designed to support their engagement in physics. Enrichment programs such as the Physics Olympiad have been found to positively impact students’ engagement and intent to pursue a career in s...

This study presents findings on the physics identity development of female students in the German Physics Olympiad who participated in an intervention designed to support their engagement in physics. Enrichment programs such as the Physics Olympiad have been found to positively impact students’ engagement and intent to pursue a career in science. H...

This Special Issue aims to present evidence about the relationships between content knowledge (CK), pedagogical knowledge (PK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK); the development of these types of knowledge in novice and experienced secondary science teachers; and how CK, PK and/or PCK impact students’ learning. Since Shulman’s introduction of...

Fachspezifische Modelle des Lehrens und Lernens bilden die Grundlage für die Gestaltung wirksamer Lernumgebungen. Die Entwicklung derartiger Modelle wurde in der Naturwissenschaftsdidaktik zum einen durch die Anwendung allgemein lernpsychologischer Modelle auf fachliche Inhalte geprägt, zum anderen jedoch auch durch Erkenntnisse zu Schülervorstellu...

Scientific literacy is an important part of education. Students that demonstrate scientific literacy can organize and coordinate their science ideas to interpret and explain a diverse range of phenomena. However, the complex thinking connected to this ability is not captured by most assessments today. We address this issue by investigating how the...

Instrument for measuring PCK of teachers

Das Basiskonzept Energie stellt für viele Schülerinnen und Schüler eine Herausforderung dar. Besondern der Energieerhaltung und potentielle Energie bereiten Lernenden Probleme. Wir stellen eine Unterrichtssequenz vor, die auf Energietransfers fokussiert und erörtern, wie dies Verständnisschwierigkeiten begegnen kann.

This paper presents a revised learning progression for the energy concept and initial findings on diverse progressions among subgroups of sample students. The revised learning progression describes how students progress towards an understanding of the energy concept along two progress variables identified from previous studies – key ideas about ene...

This study investigates the relationship between two different types of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK): the topic-specific professional knowledge (TSPK) and practical routines, so-called teaching scripts. Based on the Transformation Model of Lesson Planning, we assume that teaching scripts originate from a transformation of TSPK during lesson...

The German National Education Standards (NES) for biology, chemistry and physics define the level of competence students are expected to have developed in these subjects by the end of middle school. In order to help students meet these goals, models are needed that describe how students develop competence in the respective subjects. This chapter de...

Der Experimentierprozess wird häufig als Abfolge verschiedener Phasen dargestellt. Dabei beinhalten die Phasen bestimmte Anforderungen (z. B. das Formulieren einer Hypothese). Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird angenommen, dass zur Bewältigung dieser Anforderungen jeweils eine Kombination bestimmter Personenmerkmale wie z. B. Fachwissen, mathematische Fä...

According to the German national edcuational standards, the competence students develop in lower secondary education is expected to prepare them for example for vocational training in technical domains. In detail, it is expected that the competencies will help to gain occupation-related knowledge. Empirically, it is unclear whether and to what exte...