Research Line Science Communication and Extracurricular Learning

Members of the research line conduct various research projects to examine, for example, what actually proves beneficial for successful participation in enrichment and outreach programs. Questions such as where further support measures should be targeted or who has been supported by competitions such as the Science Olympiads are also being examined by the researchers. The aim is to improve access to offers and differentiated support approaches in a targeted manner.

Studies on the participants in the Physics Olympiad show that certain personal characteristics determine the success or failure of participation. Therefore, the individual needs of the learners play an increasingly important role in the development of new offers when it comes to ensuring that all learners benefit equally from enrichment and outreach offers. This applies to competitions as well as to offers at extracurricular learning venues such as student labs.

The research line combines the large research and development area of mathematics and science education with the comparatively young field of science communication. By involving various stakeholders, the aim is to create tailor-made outreach and enrichment offers for school and public target groups.

The IPN benefits from its long-standing partnership with Kiel University. This close cooperation has been systematically expanded through various excellence and collaborative research programs and their outreach projects. KiSOC, which received funding from the Leibniz Association from 2016 to 2020, is another building block. Researchers from both institutions jointly supervised research projects and also integrated external partners over the past few years. This has created a very close-knit network that provides a sustainable basis for research in the highly interdisciplinary context of science outreach..

Its objective is to make current socially relevant topics from research visible and accessible. Specialist researchers, design experts from media and design and, increasingly, the target groups themselves work together in theory-based collaborative and participatory design processes and are an active part of the development process. The KielSCN has been building on this experience since 2021.

There is hardly any systematic link to learning in school, although out-of-school support has established a number of concepts and structures in recent years. In terms of individual support advice, this also applies to the programs themselves. The IPN has therefore worked with other providers to establish structures and develop concepts that deal with exemplary models for educational ecosystems. The research line examines the conditions under which these models succeed and how they work.

Based on the Kiel Science Outreach Lab (Kieler Forschungswerkstatt), the IPN initially initiated and coordinated the Schleswig-Holstein School Research Center Network (SFZ-SH) with the support of the state of Schleswig-Holstein and the Joachim Herz Foundation. Interested young people are offered further STEM activities beyond the existing programs for entire school classes. It takes into account the conditions of an extended area and is directly linked to school structures. The concept represents a new prototype of structures for student research that other German states can use as a guide. Further networking structures such as the regional STEM cluster Science@Seas followed. With the MINT Academy, an umbrella format has also been established that links topic-related approaches along support levels.

Improved networking and involvement of the young people themselves is a further aim. The focus here is not only on structures, but also on content. The aim is to give young people the opportunity to work both with each other and directly with the scientific community. An important approach to this is also provided by citizen science concepts for schools and young people. The Europe-wide youth campaign Plastic Pirates - Go Europe! successfully established such a concept on the topic of plastic waste. Further developments are currently taking place in other areas such as biodiversity and archaeology. The concepts also interact with other citizen science programs at the IPN, such as WTimpact.