Projects of the division for Empirical Educational Research

Funding: Leibniz Centre for Science and Society (LCSS)

Project Leaders: Prof. Dr. Lysann Zander, Prof. Dr. Christian Imdorf

Further project members: Jannika Haase (M.Ed.)

Duration: 2023-2025

Project summary:
Given the skills shortage due to demographic and technological changes in Germany, especially in STEM professions, international students are an important target group for German employers. Although research has been carried out on international students, their integration and their academic success in their host country, only few studies have investigated the role of social relationships from the perspective of international students as potential employees in Germany. In our research project, we focus on international (STEM) students’ well-being and further experiences, their future prospects, and in particular on their social relationships within and outside the university. We use quantitative and qualitative methods, i.e., the combination of a three-wave quantitative panel study and interviews with international (STEM) students at Leibniz Universität Hannover.

Funded by: Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre/ Töpfer Stiftung  [Foundation Innovation in University Teaching/ Töpfer Foundation]

Project manager: 
Focus Scientific Monitoring: Lysann Zander; Focus project development: Cornelis Kater, Dirk Lanwert, Julius Othmer
Technische Universität Braunschweig, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Leibniz Universität Hannover

Duration: 2021-2024

Description of the project:

The joint project, which the TU Braunschweig is implementing together with the Leibniz Universität Hannover and the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, aims to develop solutions that enable and expand student collaboration via digital offerings. Solutions in the form of digital tools and concepts for collaboration are being tested, evaluated and will be anchored in the subjects in the future. In addition, innovative tools for collaboration are to be identified together with students as well as teachers and used across the universities. The testing will take place at all three participating universities and will later be made available to all Lower Saxony universities within the framework of the Dachinitiative Hochschule.digital Niedersachsen Niedersachsen. Beyond the question of whether the developed digital toolbox actually promotes the creation of cooperation networks between students, the scientific evaluation will examine how students experience working with this toolbox, whether all or only certain students benefit from it, as well as which framework conditions and methods are crucial for teachers to use it meaningfully in teaching. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Funded by: DFG - German Research Foundation

Project managers: Prof. Dr. Lysann Zander, Prof. Dr. Bettina Hannover and Prof. Dr. Nele McElvany

Further project team members: M.Sc. Elisabeth Höhne; M.Ed. Edwina Albrecht 

Duration: 2018-2022

Description of the project:
Stereotype threat (ST) describes the situation in which the knowledge of a negative stereotype about a group, to which one belongs (i.e. gender, ethnic group), causes a threat to confirm this stereotype. It was shown in various studies that under the same performance prerequisites, ST causes loss of performance. It is unresolved whether this effect only affects performance situations or learning situations as well. Further it is unresolved, whether or not ST can explain why Turkish students, a group of students confronted with extremely negative performance stereotypes, achieve on average lower language competences in German. There are only a few studies on student and teacher characteristics that moderate the effect of ST in learning situations. In addition to previous research the proposed research project shall examine implicit and explicit ST in a language learning situation. Features of German and Turkish students (extent of identification with the school, language competence, receiving culture and origin) and teachers (ethnic background, personal theories about causes for different learning successes of German and Turkish students, speaking encouragement in a ST situation) shall be examined as potential moderators of the effect of ST. Therefore, two different age groups (children in 4^th grade and adolescents in 8^th grade), and students of different school forms (primary and secondary schools) will be considered and relevant features of ST mechanisms during the learning process will be documented. Experimental study designs are chosen, through which a comparison of multiple intervention conditions in language learning situations lead to causal conclusions. Interventions can be prepared through which the language learning process in German can be supported for children and adolescents in school with a Turkish background.

Project managers: Prof. Dr. Lysann Zander

Partners: Prof. Dr. Margareta Esponda  

Further project team members: M. Sc. Elisabeth Höhne

Duration: 2016-2018

Funded by: Robert Bosch Foundation

Aim of this research project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, is to identify the pedagogical-psychological factors that trigger these positive developments, by evaluating selected well-established projects (i.e. Zukunft@BPhil of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, TanzZeit). Main research interest is to identify the particularity of the process structures and the effect of participation on student and teacher sides by using quantitative and qualitative research methods. Furthermore, the spillover effects of a participation onto the school life are to be identified.

Funded by: Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony; Innovative Teaching and Learning Concepts: Innovation plus

Project managers: Prof. Dr. Lysann Zander, M. Sc. Marius Bittner

Further projekt team members: Onur-Hayri Bakici, Linnea-Lisanne Nöth

Duration: 2022-2023

Description of the project:

The goal of the project is to motivate students to acquire solid basic programming skills in interdisciplinary learning tandems, based on the latest knowledge of teaching-learning research and using innovative teaching methods. Students will be taught techniques to use programming skills effectively, application-oriented, and cooperatively. Students first acquire programming knowledge independently with the help of online tutorials, then develop application-related programming solutions in tandem groups, and subsequently create their own teaching formats for students and pupils at secondary level. The tandems each consist of students in civil and environmental engineering and students in science teaching programs. By incorporating the created teaching formats into their own science classes, the future teachers can promote the acquisition of programming skills for future university students. The cross-faculty project addresses key elements of LUH's overall 2031 strategy. It not only promotes the emergence of interdisciplinary cooperative networks between students, but also ensures the development of innovative teaching based on current empirical findings in teaching and learning research through the intensive cooperation of two teachers from civil engineering (Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geodesy) and empirical educational research (Faculty of Philosophy).

Funded by: Structural fund of the presidential board of Leibniz University Hanover

Project managers: Prof. Dr. Lysann Zander

Duration: 2021-2023

Description of the project:

The project "A studio for evidence-based development of digital science communication in teaching and public" aims to support scientists at Leibniz University Hannover in digital communication of research results, by jointly developing digital formats for teaching and science communication based on current findings in educational research, and evaluating their effect on various target groups with regard to specific aspects (e.g. motivational effect, cognitive activation, learning gain, authenticity of the teacher). For this purpose, on the one hand, a mobile "Teaching Station" will be set up, which is designed as a complementary offer to existing infrastructures of Leibniz University Hanover (e.g. the offers of the ZQS). This "Teaching Station" can be used flexibly and across faculties by scientists at Leibniz University to produce professional video products for science communication. The "Teaching Station" is supplemented by a "Research Station", which enables the evaluation of the produced formats using educational measurement instruments. These evaluation results will be processed accordingly so that future productions can be developed on the basis of them.

Funded by: LSE - Leibniz School of Education; University Quality Improvement Funds for Teacher Education

Project managers: Prof. Dr. Lysann Zander,  M. Ed. Jannika Haase

Student assistant: Jamila Mouhamed

Duration: 2021-2023

Description of the project:
The development of teaching students’ competencies in dealing with (cultural) heterogeneity and with the social integration of refugee and recently immigrated school children and adolescents continue to gain importance. Further, due to the increasing importance of digital teaching at schools and universities, there is a particular need for enabling teaching students to develop and implement digital teaching and learning formats that promote the social integration of recently immigrated children and adolescents. Both teaching students and school teachers are currently searching for solutions while facing the challenge of encouraging recently immigrated children and children raised up in Germany to establish positive and supportive relationships in remote learning environments.

The main goal of the project is to translate an existing project, which has been implemented in schools with proven positive results, into a digital format with teaching students, teachers and experts in digital teaching and learning (film, media, design, graphics) (for the already existing project PAI - Peer-Assisted Social and Identificatory Integration of Refugee Students, see concluded projects).

Teaching students at the Leibniz University Hannover actively and constructively participate in developing digital teaching formats while they engage in cooperative work with already practicing teachers by creating ideas together and implementing these ideas at schools. In addition, the goal of the project is to establish, intensify, and consolidate (existing) cooperation structures between teaching students, instructors at the Leibniz University Hannover, teachers, and experts in digital teaching and learning. On a structural level, this can facilitate students’ transition from universities to the teaching profession and interlink the three phases of studying teaching programs (studying, traineeship/entry into the profession, further training). The project aims to promote competencies in dealing with inclusion and heterogeneity and (digital) media competence among prospective teachers and thus facilitates teachers’ dealing with challenging situations in digital learning environments after graduation. For the long-term implementation of the digital intervention sessions, a video and material platform will be created for future seminars.      

Funded by: Robert Bosch Stiftung

Project manager: Prof. Dr. Lysann Zander

Further project team member: Jannika Haase

Student assistants: Helena Ballüer, Ramin Alizadeh, Miriam Silbermann

Duration: 2022 – 2023

Description of the project: 

From 2016 to 2018, the Robert Bosch Stiftung funded a research project in which we developed and scientifically evaluated an intervention ("WIRwerden") for refugee children and adolescents in schools. In the program, children and adolescents who had fled as well as children and adolescents who had grown up in Germany got to know each other in tandems and small groups and exchanged ideas on various topics (e.g. values, ideas about the future) over a period of nine weeks. They were guided by specially trained coaches (students of teaching, psychology and educational science). The effectiveness of the intervention was proven in an accompanying scientific study: Not only immigrant children but also children who had grown up in Germany benefited from participation, for example, by perceiving themselves as more academically and socially competent. Against the background of the currently worsening situation in the Ukraine war and the growing number of refugee children and adolescents from Ukraine, we aim at (1) immediately adapting the developed program for the current target group and implementing it in schools in the short term (immediate program), and (2) developing a flexibly usable, professionally digitized short version of the previous program, which can be used by students of teaching, teacher trainees and teachers within and outside of the school classroom.

Funded by: LSE - Leibniz School of Education

Project Managers: Prof. Dr. Lysann Zander

Further project team members: Jannika Haase, Sören Traulsen

Duration: 2023

Description of the project:

Leibniz Universität Hannover (LUH) aims at improving general teaching and study conditions, as well as the presentation of the range of courses on offer, through new designs and optimized structures for its websites. With the parallel offer of quantitatively and qualitatively oriented courses as well as the possibility of deepening in the field of social network analysis, which is unique in Germany so far, LUH can offer students an attractive offer throughout Germany. In order to increase the visibility of this offer, we aim at:

(1) producing a short image film

(2) restructuring the sub-page of the MA in Educational Research that belongs to the website of the MA in Educational Sciences and to make it more informative and attractive for prospective students and students.