Research
What mathematical and scientific skills does today’s world require? What do we need to understand about math, tech, and the sciences if we are to be aware of current developments in these fields and form a view on them? What knowledge and skills does everyone need, in light of the changes and advances in STEM that affect us all; and what about those who aspire to careers in these fields? And, crucially, how do people become interested in scientific, mathematical, and tech-related issues at in school, at work, or in their own time?
In exploring these and other questions, researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN) in Kiel study the individual and societal conditions underlying education in mathematics and the sciences, its processes, and its outcomes, across people’s lifespans. Our approach encompasses analysis of learning groups, institutions, and education systems alongside consideration of individuals’ personal circumstances. The IPN's projects that relate to school-based education seek to engage with learners’ experience and teachers’ professional practice alike as they examine the quality of mathematics and science education and the conditions under which Germany’s education system delivers it.
The IPN structures its research work in research strands that intertwine and overlap theoretically and empirically.
We center our nationwide activities on projects which it is not possible or practicable to base at one of Germany’s higher education institutions and which are in the public interest at federal level or at the level of individual German states. Our research is subject to standards of good academic and scientific practice as set out in the DFG’s Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Scientific Practice, which serve as its research code of conduct. Read more about these standards here.
