Weiterentwicklung eines klassischen Schülerlabors – Darstellung des aktuellen Forschungsstandes

Abstract

Background: Since the year 2000, an exponential increase in the number of school labs founded by students has been recorded. This is partly due to the poor results of students in the PISA and TIMSS studies, but also to the high value placed on natural and engineering sciences in Germany. The student laboratories have been an integral part of the German school landscape for many years, and with the wave of start-ups, interest in research in student laboratories also grew. Engeln (2004) set the starting signal with her research project by investigating the effects of five student laboratories. These investigations are still ongoing today and a positive effect of the student laboratories has not yet been conclusively clarified. At  Bielefeld University, the classic teutolab-robotics laboratory for pupils is to be further developed on the basis of the knowledge gained here and introduced into schools.

Purpose: The systematic literature review is intended to provide a comprehensive picture of the state of research and its results, as well as to highlight possible research gaps that have rarely been considered so far. It thus provides an overview of studies in the field of out-of-school laboratory research in German-speaking countries.
Methods: The literature review represents a critical examination of already existing research results of a topic. An integrative review offers the opportunity to bring together studies of different methods, to reflect the current state of research and to point out direct areas of application in practice. After passing through the steps of problem formulation, literature search, and evaluation of the quality of the data, the final selection comprised 42 studies, whose results were finally analysed and interpreted.

Results: Since 2000, the study review has yielded predominantly positive research results regarding the effect of out-of-school lab visits on affective and motivational characteristics of students. However, the effects are mostly not sustainable, which is based on the fact that the out-of-school lab visits are often short-term and one-off interventions.

Conclusion: The results of the systematic literature review indicate that further evaluations of (permanent) offers must be carried out to identify influencing factors that affect or improve the sustainability of the described effects. In addition, the subject areas of technology and computer science need to be given greater focus and the results described need to be reviewed with a view to the planned integration of an out-of-school laboratory into the school. Possible desiderata are outlined at the end of the paper.

Keywords: Design-Based-Research, out-of-school laboratories, systematic literature review