Current Research Projects

STEM & Gender: Subproject in the MINTvernetzt Project, Establishment of a Germany-Wide STEM Education Competence and Networking Center

The MINTvernetzt project is establishing a nationwide competence and networking center for extracurricular STEM education. It aims to elevate extracurricular STEM education for children and adolescents with a focus on girls and young women. The project supports providers of extracurricular STEM education, coordinators of STEM networks, women in STEM advocacy initiatives, and volunteers in STEM education by providing networking spaces, sharing of best practices, and innovative impulses.

The focus of the STEM and Gender subproject at the University of Regensburg is providing solutions to the STEM community on how to encourage more girls and women to take up STEM. There is usually not a lack of suitable instruments or findings from research but rather a need for appropriate transfer into practice and scaling up of successful projects. This is where the STEM and Gender subproject comes in, firstly, by implementing monitoring of STEM education programs from a gender perspective and, secondly, by creating synergies through the networking of projects with a gender focus, and, thirdly, by improving the transfer of research findings on gender aspects in STEM education into practice.

MINTvernetzt is a joint initiative by the Körber Foundation, the matrix gGmbH, the National STEM Forum e.V., the Stifterverband, and the University of Regensburg.

Funding

MINTvernetzt has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) since 2021.

More Information

www.mint-vernetzt.de

Researchers

Prof. Dr. Heidrun Stoeger, Susanne Schober, Dr. Michael Heilemann

"CyberMentor" (E-Mentoring in STEM)

CyberMentor is an online mentoring program for female pupils from grade 5 to 13 in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) who are accompanied by women working in these fields.

Each student works with an individual mentor for at least one year. Women are still strongly underrepresented in STEM fields. One reason for this is a general lack of female role models. CyberMentor seeks to increase girls’ interest in STEM and to help them discover ways of entering STEM professions by presenting appropriate female role models working in STEM. Each mentor–mentee dyad exchanges weekly emails in which they discuss school, university study, careers, and other interesting STEM-related topics. Additionally, all participants have access to a members-only internet platform with various forums and chat options as well as to an online newsmagazine containing interesting STEM-related articles, book recommendations, and games. The project is examining three groups of pupils with a longitudinal research design: female pupils who registered for the program and are currently participating; Femal pupils who have registered but are only eligible to participate in the programme after one year (the waiting-list control group containing individuals with interests similar to those of the current participants); and pupils of both sexes who have not registered for the program (a control group consisting of students with various interests). The program is also developing and formally evaluating various training concepts for mentors.

Every year, up to 800 female high school students between the ages of 11 and 18 and up to 800 female academics from the STEM field from all over Germany take part in the program.

For more information: www.cybermentor.de Participating Institutions and Persons: University of Regensburg: Prof. Dr. Heidrun Stoeger, Faisal Ahsan, Dr. Daniel Patrick Balestrini, Sonja Bayer, Dr. Tobias Debatin, Dr. Kathrin Emmerdinger, Kristin Frauenhoffer, Ildikó Győryné Csomó, Dr. Marina Kaas, Dr. Sigrun Schirner , and Dr. Claudia Uebler .

University of Erlangen-Nuremberg: Prof. Dr. Dr. Albert Ziegler, Katharina Gryc

Promoting Excellence in School Education: Transfer Into the School Landscape

Promoting Excellence in School Education: Transfer Into the School Landscape (LemaS Transfer) is a research network funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research in which a total of 17 universities are involved. This research network is responsible for the scientific supervision of the transfer of offers from the federal–state initiative “Promoting Excellence in School Education,” which support high-achieving and particularly capable learners. The initiative comprises two funding phases. In the first funding phase (2018 to 2023), strategies, concepts, and measures for the development of a school and teaching culture that promotes talent and achievement were developed in 22 sub-projects together with 300 schools across Germany. In this context, the University of Regensburg was responsible for the sub-project “Individualization Through Mentoring in Schools” in cooperation with the Friedrich–Alexander University of Erlangen–Nuremberg.

The aim of the second funding phase (transfer phase) is the sustainable implementation and transfer of the strategies, concepts, and measures that were developed in the first funding phase. To this end, teachers from schools that have already collaborated with the research network in the first phase will be trained as multipliers in order to pass on the concepts developed in the first phase to teachers from up to 1000 other schools within the framework of school networks. The LemaS Transfer research network assists the schools in this task by providing professionalization and support services and at the same time examines the transfer and implementation processes on a scientific basis.
One focus at the University of Regensburg is the supervision of the “CyberMentor Plus” concept that was developed during the first funding phase, which aims to support girls in the STEM fields (mathematics, computer science, natural sciences, and technology) and combines extracurricular online expert mentoring with school-based support in the context of STEM clubs.

Funding:
The LemaS Transfer research network is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) from 2023 to 2027. In addition, “CyberMentor Plus” is also funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Instruction and Culture.

Participating institutions and persons: Prof. Dr. Heidrun Stoeger, Dr. Kathrin Emmerdinger, Sonja Bayer, Dr. Benjamin Matthes, Doreen von Seidlitz, and Dr. Claudia Uebler.

LemaS Transfer research collaborative: www.lemas-forschung.de/themen/lemas-transfer

Federal–state initiative “Promoting Excellence in School Education”: www.leistung-macht-schule.de

The fine-motor and sensorimotor foundations of learning

In a series of studies, we have demonstrated that fine motor skills (FMS) link to a range of early cognitive and academic skills. Specifically, preschoolers’ FMS relate to their concurrent and later performance on measures of early literacy, reading, and mathematics skills. Further, we have found evidence that children’s cognitive and language development is also affected by their FMS. The question now is to understand why FMS link to academic and cognitive development.

Understanding why and how children’s FMS influence their cognitive development relates to age-old philosophical struggles in understanding how the body relates to the mind (e.g., dualism) and how the senses influence and can be trusted in thought (e.g., rationalism, empiricism, phenomenology). Moreover, understanding how sensorimotor factors influence cognitive and academic development has implications for numerous disciplines, including education, psychology, medicine, and neurology.

Our current work has implicated three main explanations for links between FMS and cognitive development. The first points towards common developmental underpinnings, the second focuses on the functionality of FMS and sensorimotor skills for learning, and the third on shared internalized processes. One example of the latter explanation we termed the Nimble-Hands, Nimble-Minds hypothesis (Suggate & Stoeger, 2017, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology).

Accordingly, we attempt to study links between FMS, sensorimotor skills, and cognitive development in a broad number of ways, touching on a number of disciplines. Particular foci of our work are on:

establishing the key fine and sensorimotor skills involved;
determining links between fine and sensorimotor skills and language and conceptual development;
testing causal pathways between fine and sensorimotor skills and later academic development;
conducting experiments to investigate theoretical explanations for links.

Participating Persons:

Prof. Heidrun Stoeger, Apl. Prof. Dr. Sebastian Suggate, Viktoria Karle, and Re becca Winter

FösaMINT - Advancing cooperation between curricular and extracurricular STEM programs with a focus on gender

FösaMINT is a project for advancing the cooperation between curricular and extracurricular STEM programs with a focus on gender. The goal of FösaMINT is to ensure equal opportunities in STEM by creating optimal conditions for in-school and out-of-school STEM promotion and the targeted interconnection of existing providers. To this end, FösaMINT will investigate and evaluate the individual environments of students and the interrelation of in-school and out-of-school learning contexts, as well as the conditions for the success of concerted STEM promotion via multi-method longitudinal studies. The research results and case reports will serve both scientists and practitioners and will be provided to a variety of STEM stakeholders. Finally, the findings of FösaMINT will serve to enhance the programs of cooperating providers of curricular and extracurricular STEM programs with regard to sustainability and contextual expansion.

Funding: The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung) from August 2022 to July 2027.

Involved institutions and researchers: University of Regensburg: Prof. Dr. Heidrun Stoeger, Anne Forche, Laura Pöhmerer, Dr. Sigrun Schirner

University of Erlangen-Nuremberg: Prof. Drs. Albert Ziegler, Lukas Ketscher, Brigitte Merz, and Johanna Pfeuffer

MesH_MINT

MesH_MINT is a meta-project that is concerned with strategic fields of action in STEM education. It aims to collect relevant research on STEM education and review it in a scientific and practical way. The project is motivated by the worldwide shortage of skilled workers in the STEM sector, which has remained stable despite countless funding initiatives and extensive research. MesH_MINT is a large-scale collaborative project, involving the University of Regensburg, the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Stifterverband. During the course of the project, we review available research knowledge and, where necessary, supplement it with additional research on white spots in the German research landscape. We further bridge the gap between theory and practice by identifying conditions which effectively promote STEM education and by transferring those findings into practice.
MesH_MINT focusses on both conceptual and empirical research on three strategic fields of action in STEM education: (1) STEM education research, (2) STEM education practice, and (3) STEM stakeholders. The analysis is conducted along the following two cross-cutting themes: (1) effectiveness and sustainability as well as (2) diversity and equity.

Funding: The collaborative project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) from April 2023 to March 2028.

Participating Institutions and Persons:
University of Regensburg: Prof. Dr. Heidrun Stoeger, Dr. Sigrun Schirner, Dr. Diana Wengler, and Fabian Heller

University of Erlangen-Nuremberg: Prof. Drs. Albert Ziegler, Mehmet Bicakci, Charlotte Popp, and Maryam Shiani