Heike Schettler
Playing Catch-Up in German
Early Science Education with
Science-Lab
Innovations Case Narrative:
Science-Lab
The poor results shown for German students in international studies that com-
pared student achievement in various fields came as a shock to the different con-
stituent groups in Germany, such as parents, educational professionals, and politi-
cians. The German government has generally considered its education system
superior to those of other countries, but German students’ results in the 2000
Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, were significantly lower
than the mean of all participating countries in all three areas that were tested: lit-
eracy, mathematics, and science (Weiss et al., 2001). Immediately afterward,
lengthy and emotional discussions started about the reasons for the poor results.
One problem was the late start of science teaching in the German education sys-
tem. Dans 2002, there was no science program in German preschools or kinder-
gartens (henceforth referred to as kindergartens, since in Germany almost all chil-
dren attend kindergarten from age three to six). In primary schools, science was
only a small part of the curriculum and focused mainly on biological topics, like
plants and animals, but also touched briefly on subjects like water, air, tempera-
ture, and even electricity. Cependant, even countries with science programs and cur-
ricula in place for this age group face the challenge that science teaching for young
children must be different from the higher education approach. It should be far
Docteur. Heike Schettler is Founder and Managing Partner of Science-Lab, and a social
entrepreneur focused on natural science education for children aged 4 à 10. After
studying Chemistry and receiving her PhD in science, she moved to Texas (UTA) pour
her postdoc. After returning to Germany, Schettler worked for BMW, Kabel New
Médias, and her own enterprise, Highserve, a technology consulting firm. Inspired by
her own children, she went back to her scientific roots in 2002 and founded Science-
Lab. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in education at the University of Bath.
© 2010 Heike Schettler
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more phenomena driven in order to help children understand their world and life
experiences. This means, par exemple, that the chosen topics connect with every-
day life situations of children, that phenomena are looked at from different angles
and not pressed into one science field (like physics or chemistry or biology), que
the children are the owners of the learning process, and that the teacher takes the
role of the facilitator in this process rather than being the source of knowledge and
information. To be successful, professionals delivering science education to the
young need a particular set of skills. Germany had neither an explicit science pro-
gram nor the skilled professionals available when my partner Sonja and I started
Science-Lab in spring 2002.
THE ACTORS
I was born and raised in East Germany and had a solid science education in the
East German school system. Biology started in fifth grade, physics in sixth grade,
and chemistry in seventh. The East German education system had many short-
comings, but when it came to science education its approach was very good.
Teaching science to students in fifth grade for two hours per week, gradually
increasing it to six hours for those in seventh through tenth grade and through
twelfth grade for those who were university bound, gave students enough time to
acquire science content and lab skills. En même temps, West Germany had a sys-
tem in which students could select their subjects and thus could get away in the
extreme with as little as two years of science education.
After finishing high school and working at a chemical company, I earned my
master’s and doctoral degrees in physical chemistry. After one year as a postdoc-
toral student at the University of Texas at Arlington, I started my industrial career
at BMW in Munich. Before I founded Science-Lab, I had started a successful high-
tech consulting company. Through my two children I got to know Sonja Stuchtey,
who also had two children at that time and now has five. As we became friends, nous
shared many discussions about the education of children within this ever-chang-
ing and technology-driven time. Her background was in strategic management,
and she had her own customer relations management company. When we started
Science-Lab, we had a mutual understanding about quality and professionalism,
and that everything we would do had to fulfill one purpose: it had to be for the
benefit and the well-being of children. We agreed that our goal would be to do any-
thing we could to support children in understanding their world, to broaden their
horizons, and to offer them opportunities they might otherwise not have. Now,
seven years later, our aim is as true as it was in 2002.
THE FIRST STEPS
The early steps of Science-Lab were inspired by our own oldest children, who were
four years old at that time. Everybody who has children knows how many “why”
questions they come up with each day and how curious they are to discover their
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Playing Catch-Up in German Early Science Education with Science-Lab
monde. Our own children were no exception. As attentive parents, we wanted to
support their process of discovery but also to leave it in the children’s hands as
much as possible. At the beginning, we randomly chose questions from those our
children had posed and tried to help them find answers by letting them experi-
ment with household materials and guiding them by asking questions. Our chil-
dren were delighted, and soon we didn’t have only our own children but also the
children of friends and relatives joining our “science kitchen and garden lab.” All
of them expressed a lot of interest and were enthusiastic about our activities. À
this time we already realized, cependant, that all of their parents had a higher educa-
tion background, many of them in engineering or science. Therefore we were curi-
ous to see if the children’s interest came from already having a somewhat informed
lifestyle, or if at that early age the parents’ occupation was basically irrelevant. Nous
asked one of the local kindergartens with a mixed clientele if we could work with
their students on one scientific phenomenon from their world in a 30-minute ses-
sion. Our wish was granted, and we prepared a session about “the air around us.”
Our afternoon session included 30 enfants. They were given the choice to play
with any of the indoor or outdoor toys and games the kindergarten offered, or to
attend our session. One child wanted to play in the sandpit, but everyone else
wanted to join us. When we let the children use simple experiments to help them
understand the phenomenon of air being there even when not visible, the children
were totally engaged, and the time went by much more quickly than anyone antic-
ipated. It didn’t make any difference what background the children came from—
they were all eagerly engaged in learning and exploring. This was most encourag-
ing to us, and we hypothesized that children at this age are genuinely interested in
science in the sense that they want to explore the world around them, no matter
what cultural or family background they come from.
We noticed one interesting tendency even back then: the teachers of that par-
ticular kindergarten were extremely shy and went on to do other business rather
than watching us working with their children. Only toward the end, when they
realized how engaged their children were, did they start to come closer and have a
more or less reluctant peek. I will come to the reasons for that later.
DEVELOPING THE CONCEPT
After those initial findings, we thought that every child should have the chance to
experience science at an early age, and to do so in a way that suits their age and
broadens their horizons. Ideally this should take place in kindergartens and pri-
mary schools, and what struck us most was that it just didn’t happen. But what
were the reasons it didn’t happen? What was keeping science out of the classroom?
Why were teachers in German kindergartens and primary schools reluctant to step
into the fascinating world of science? In our eyes and with our background and
experience, it was fascinating and rewarding to help children understand their
world and to learn about their life in a fun and meaningful way.
We found this experience so compelling that we wanted to change the situa-
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tion in Germany and expose children at a fairly young age to science phenomena
that they could grasp and think about according to their own level of understand-
ing. But who were we, two women with science and economic backgrounds and
four young children, that we could tell professionals how they should do their job?
Nevertheless, we immersed ourselves in the literature on education in general and
science education in particular and started to develop a concept for how to explore
a variety of science phenomena with kindergarten children. Through our previous
professional work, we knew from the beginning what our most important criteria
would be: the highest quality in science teaching, sustainability for the children
involved, and for all the people who lived and worked with them. A one-time visit
to a kindergarten wouldn’t be enough; in order to change children’s thinking and
understanding, we would need to offer regular sessions to explore science phe-
nomena that the children experienced in their worlds. That led us to develop our
first science course for children four to six years old.
PROVING THE CONCEPT
After putting together a science course for kindergarten children, Sonja and I
wanted to find out if what we were doing made any sense—if children would like
to come to our class and whether they would benefit from a science course that
wasn’t just a one-time event. But how should we go about that? The only chance
we had was to find children who would come voluntarily to a club once a week and
explore their world with us. Donc, we rented a room and prepared our first series of
science sessions. We also found a local newspaper that agreed to write five lines
about the fact that Science-Lab was starting soon and that it would help children
find answers to questions like, How is a rainbow formed? Our goal was to get a
group of approximately 10 children together; we would ask their parents to pay a
fee so we could cover the cost of the room and the babysitters who took care of our
younger children while we were teaching. The effect was overwhelming. Notre
phones didn’t stop ringing after the notice was published, and within a few days we
had 24 children who wanted to join Science-Lab. Donc, instead of starting with one
group of children, we immediately started with three. This gave us the chance to
climb the learning curve even faster. In order to do so, we reflected on each lesson
and looked for ways to improve our approach. The children were very enthusias-
tic and counted down the number of nights they had to sleep before they could
come back. Several mothers told us that their children didn’t want to go to birth-
day parties or even weddings if they were on a Science-Lab day. En effet, all the chil-
dren attended the 14 sessions we offered over the course of five months. Even more
exciting was the fact that once the course was over, they wanted to come to the next
un. Half-way into the first course, Sonja and I knew we had tapped into some-
thing that didn’t exist in Germany before, and that it was something children and
parents were equally enthusiastic about.
Clearly there was a demand for an academically sound, child-centered
approach to give children the science-based “brain food” they needed. Many
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Playing Catch-Up in German Early Science Education with Science-Lab
German parents were dissatisfied with the programs kindergartens offered, lequel
banned children from learning to read or write, even when the children were ready
for it. En outre, the kindergarten teachers were not trained or ready to explore
the children’s world through a scientist’s glasses, thus only a few teachers were able
to support the children adequately. By now this has changed in many kinder-
gartens, and we can proudly say that our work certainly provided the spark to
bring about this change. Cependant, many German kindergarten teachers still think
the same as the one who told me back in 2002, “Don’t make the kids get their high
school degree in kindergarten. Let them have their freedom. They will experience
the seriousness of life early enough when they go into first grade.” This attitude
makes me sad, since it implies that learning only starts at school and that learning
is no fun. What we experience with the children is so different: they are hungry to
get to know and understand their world, and they have such joy in learning. Ils
feel so proud when they figure out something themselves and they come to the
classes eagerly, since they sense the high respect we have for them and for their
learning process. The children brought us such great rewards that we wanted to
give up our careers and concentrate 100 percent on science education for young
enfants.
During our initial research, we had looked into other science programs avail-
able for young children. We found a variety of smaller and very local initiatives,
and international initiatives like Hands-On Science in the U.S. or La Main à la Pâte
in France. Cependant, none of those initiatives was suitable for broader implemen-
tation in Germany, since they either lacked the quality standards we wanted or they
were clearly linked to a specific state education or cultural background. In spring
2003, we had successfully completed a number of Science-Lab courses for a small
number of children. We knew that the way we were doing it was different from
anything that had been done in Germany and other countries before, and we saw
rising demand from parents in other areas in Germany who had heard about
Science-Lab through friends or articles in German newspapers and journals (par exemple.,
Der Spiegel). We realized that we had to make a decision on how to proceed.
EXPANDING REACH AND CONTENT
In April 2003, two things happened at the same time. D'abord, parents of children
attending our kindergarten courses asked us to develop courses for children of pri-
mary school age—that is, for the older siblings of our young students. We proceed-
ed to expand our concept for an older age group and planned to start trial sessions
in the summer. Deuxième, we started to receive phone calls from parents in cities far
away from our base near Munich who wanted Science-Lab courses for their chil-
dren in their area. Since there was no chance for us to travel around teaching sci-
ence, we had to find people teaching science in the way we thought most success-
ful and meaningful for the kids. In order to find such people, we turned to the par-
ents calling us and asked them if they wanted to become science teachers for their
enfants, especially since most of them had a university degree, many of them in
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engineering or science. That is how we recruited our first three Science-Lab teach-
ers. Using the knowledge and skills of highly qualified parents proved to be a very
successful idea. Only later we found out that other models use that resource as well;
par exemple, the Parents as Teachers program in the U.S.
After consulting with a lawyer and a tax consultant, we realized that German
law would make it difficult and risky for us to employ people far away, so we decid-
ed to license the Science-Lab concept and make it a franchise; we learned only
much later that we were probably the first social franchise in Germany. We want-
ed to reach people who committed themselves for a certain period of time, OMS
had the fire burning inside them to do this kind of work with children, who were
able to contribute to the training cost but whose priority was not to make money
off this work. Since being selected as an Ashoka Fellow in 2006, I have shared our
approach in multiple public discussions and with other German fellows, like
Meinrad Armbruster (Eltern-AG), Rose Volz-Schmidt (wellcome), or Judy Korn
(Violence Prevention Network), since they faced challenges similar to ours. Par
using a social franchise approach, we reached the most committed people who
were able to work independently, while giving us the chance to ensure the quality
and sustainability we consider most important for that kind of work. What start-
ed out with three people in spring 2003 has now become a group of more than 60
highly dedicated and committed science teachers for kindergarten and primary
school children. All the teachers have a strong relationship with us, which goes far
beyond the realm of contracts. We have a process in place that helps us find and
retain these important agents for our children. If someone is interested in becom-
ing a teacher with us, we usually talk to them on the phone to explain what we are
doing and how we are doing it. To get a personal impression, we encourage the
candidate to visit a session with one of our teachers close to where the candidate
lives. If the candidate and the teacher both have a positive impression, we engage
in more specific talks and, if successful, greet her or him as a new member of our
Science-Lab community.
The candidate chooses the first science course she or he will train for and meets
with other teachers at one of the training weekends. We have no more than four
training weekends per year in order to get as many people together as possible.
Because we are all working on a local basis, we need to provide opportunities to
exchange experiences and ideas and for personal contact. Therefore we teach sev-
eral of our courses on one weekend. Those weekend trainings are extremely
intense and at the same time stimulating, motivating, and fun. We always have a
mixed group of beginning teachers and teachers who are attending in order to
expand their repertoire to include other age groups or topics. One of our teaching
techniques is to use role-play to emulate real-life situations with the children. Chaque
teacher has to present a trial session that simulates parts of a lesson with the chil-
les enfants, which is treated like an exam. Every participant receives feedback and coach-
ing from the trainer and from the other participants, and they leave the session
with clear knowledge about their strengths and challenges. Even after the training,
nobody is left alone. Regular contact with the teachers identifies challenges and
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Playing Catch-Up in German Early Science Education with Science-Lab
Chiffre 1. Map of Germany, Indicating Locations of Science-Lab Teachers.
opportunities and gives them the chance to get better every day. In the beginning,
Sonja and I were coaching all of our teachers ourselves. As the organization grew,
we identified teachers with the necessary skills to take care of the teachers in their
local region. We currently have leaders in six German regions: in Berlin, and in
northern, western, central, eastern, and southern Germany. We also have one per-
son responsible for Austria, one for Switzerland, and one for non-German-speak-
ing countries, with Spain being our main focus at present. The number of Science-
Lab teachers has grown steadily since we started to license our program, especial-
ly in highly populated areas such as Berlin, Frankfurt, and the Rhein-Main area,
Munich, and the Ruhr valley. We are currently working on reaching other areas in
Germany while maintaining our high quality standards.
We have established a variety of important tools that help us monitor the qual-
ity of and support for our teachers. Every teacher has to give feedback about each
session taught. The regional leaders look at this feedback and take action if neces-
sary. Par exemple, if a teacher reports having difficulty taking the children’s ques-
tions in a particular session and developing a meaningful learning experience out
of it, the regional leader calls the teacher to discuss how we can assist them.
Sometimes we have to strengthen content skills, sometimes a different method-
ological focus is needed, and sometimes a teacher needs help in understanding the
children better. By supporting Science-Lab teachers in their daily work, all of them
grow in experience and the quality of our work improves constantly.
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The feedback is also used to update every course we have developed once a
année. That gives us the chance to incorporate comments, ideas, new experiments,
and educational games that our teachers and their children have developed into
the Science-Lab curriculum and make them available to all of our teachers. Every
teacher receives a yearly update so that she or he can implement all the other teach-
ers’ ideas and improvements. The next pillar of our quality system is parents’ and
children’s feedback. After a teacher runs a course, parents and children are asked
for their feedback on a short questionnaire, which gives us important information
about how to make our courses and activities better. The third pillar of our quali-
ty system is that we see every teacher personally at least once a year. If they don’t
attend a training weekend, they are required to participate in one of the seminars
we offer about twice a year. This allows us to ensure that all Science-Lab teachers
maintain the highest standards in teaching science to young children.
Over the last seven years, we have reached about 17,000 children through these
extracurricular science courses. This seems to be an impressive figure, looking at it
as a program started from scratch. But do we reach all kids? By no means. We are
not even able to fulfill the current demand, as we don’t have enough Science-Lab
teachers to cover all of Germany, as the map shows. Parents will not drive a child
longer than 30 minutes to attend a 45- to 90-minute class. Donc, pour
reach children where they are educated, we need to train kindergarten and primary
school teachers how to teach science to young children in a fun yet sustainable way.
In doing so, we can give our children a foundation of basic science knowledge
through kindergartens and primary schools. Ideally, children who discover their
interest in science through their school or kindergarten would be offered extracur-
ricular courses. Science-Lab teachers giving these courses could identify young sci-
ence talents and give them the chance to pursue their interest even further, togeth-
er with other children that were selected because of their special interest in natu-
ral science. Basically, this early vision is what we have been working on for the last
five years, and still are.
REACHING OUT TO ALL CHILDREN
By the end of 2004, we had proven that our concept of science teaching for young
children worked. We also proved that it wasn’t solely dependent on Sonja and me
and could be transferred to other people and regions. Newspaper and journal arti-
cles about Science-Lab helped us become known to a wider group of interested
people. It also helped us tackle the next step and gain access to professionals in
kindergartens and primary schools. In order to establish science teaching in other
domaines, we needed to include science in the curriculum and at the same time quali-
fy the teachers to implement the science content in the classroom. As a result of
discussions held in the aftermath of the PISA studies, le 16 German states one by
one integrated science into their kindergarten and primary school curricula. Même
though Science-Lab was very young back in 2004, the Bavarian Institute for Early
Childhood Pedagogy asked us to contribute the science section of the Bavarian
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Playing Catch-Up in German Early Science Education with Science-Lab
Chiffre 2. For a holistic approach, we envisioned a pyramid-like structure to sci-
ence teaching for young children in Germany.
kindergarten curriculum. Aujourd'hui, all German states have a written science curricu-
lum for both kindergarten and primary schools. I mention both institutions
because they are quite different in Germany. While primary schools are adminis-
tered by state education ministries, kindergartens are usually administered by the
state ministries of family, health, and seniors. This means that the transition from
kindergarten to primary school often isn’t as smooth as it should be. En outre,
merely putting a science curriculum in place is not sufficient; if we want to imple-
ment this curriculum in the classroom, we need to support the teachers in doing
donc.
BACK TO THE ROOTS: THE TEACHER PERCEPTION PROBLEM
As I mentioned earlier, many German teachers at the kindergarten and primary
school level seemed reluctant to engage in science topics. This is likely due to their
propre (perceived or real) lack of scientific knowledge due to their experience with
natural science at school. Many kindergarten teachers told us that they chose their
career in part because they didn’t like science at school and didn’t want to be
involved in natural science. Many of those teachers experienced science as a for-
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Chiffre 3. Quality system for Science-Lab teachers.
mula-driven applied mathematics course and had hardly any understanding of the
phenomena that were the basis for the mathematical interpretation. When we
asked them about their science experience and associations, we got far more neg-
ative than positive comments. Donc, one of our main goals was to change the
teachers’ perception of natural science into something exciting, fun, and worth
exploring. De plus, rather than pushing our experiences and knowledge into
kindergartens and primary schools, we wanted teachers to ask us for support. Nous
also knew that the amount of time and commitment we expected from our
Science-Lab teachers was far too much to expect from teachers in kindergartens
and schools, as they had other engagements and targets to meet. Donc, nous
developed a specific teacher training, first for kindergarten teachers and later for
primary school teachers. We focused on phenomena that were as close as possible
to the work of kindergarten teachers that they used almost every day, such as col-
ors. Another example is sound, since music plays such a vital role in every kinder-
garten child’s life. Although teachers and children make a lot of music in kinder-
gartens, they didn’t look at it from a scientific point of view. Starting with just a
few phenomena, we helped them little by little to put on their “science glasses” and
look at (feel, hear, and smell) their world with a young scientist’s eye (main, ear,
and nose). We worked with kindergarten teachers in our vicinity and were able to
monitor their implementation of our activities on a day-to-day basis. This helped
us refine our offerings and convince other kindergartens to send their staff to our
training sessions.
At first there were only a few, but we treated every teacher as a valuable
resource and someone who could influence the life of children significantly. Nous
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Playing Catch-Up in German Early Science Education with Science-Lab
were happy about every child who was inspired by his or her teacher to explore sci-
ence even further. Amazingly, we were able to turn around teachers’ attitude
toward science with only one day of training. Kindergarten teachers in particular
were enthusiastic and thankful after the training. One said, “Had I learned science
that way, my life would have unfolded quite differently.” One age 50+ teacher com-
mented, “That was the very first time I thoroughly enjoyed a training day.” We have
now trained close to 8,000 kindergarten teachers in our one-day basic session, et
almost all of them left our training convinced that science isn’t as difficult as they
always thought it to be. En outre, they find fun in exploring science phenom-
ena through the eyes of the children and are keen to try their new knowledge and
skills with their students. Many of the teachers come back after 12 ou 18 months to
reflect on their work and explore new topics. Many of them also use our training
as a starting point for exploring the world of science phenomena with their chil-
les enfants, even in areas previously unknown to them. Those results are the most
rewarding for us, since we reach the children and their teachers, and are able to
change their attitude toward science and their understanding of it.
We maintain contact with the teachers attending our trainings to make sure
they have what they need to put on the “science glasses” in their daily work. C'est
also essential for our quality assurance. All participants are asked for feedback
immediately after the training and are sent a questionnaire approximately 18
months later to find out how well the implementation of science content went in
their kindergarten classes.
The Science-Lab teachers who train other professionals have to qualify for the
job by having extensive experience working with children of the relevant age
group. They also have to be able to work with adults. We train them specifically for
that kind of work, again followed by an exam and a coaching process while they
first attend teacher-training sessions and gradually lead one themselves. They are
monitored and required to give feedback after each teacher training, and they meet
with all other teacher trainers ones a year to discuss new developments, challenges,
and ideas.
Basically everything I described for kindergarten teacher training is true for
the training of primary school teachers. Cependant, primary school teachers are
much more restricted by their state curricula. Primary schools in Germany have
educational targets to meet or certain areas to cover in their teaching, y compris
science. Even though Germany is a small country, it has 16 states. All schools are
under the control of the state governments rather than the central German gov-
ernment, which leads to 13 different primary school curricula (some northern
German states have a joint curriculum). When we looked at those primary school
curricula, we found that all demand teaching of more or less the same science phe-
nomena. Donc, we developed our primary school teacher program with a
focus on the phenomena rather than the 13 different curricular demands.
Cependant, when we teach teachers in a particular German state, we have to consid-
er where the teachers come from and specify our training to the curriculum they
know in order to offer them optimal support. Apart from that, the situation in a
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primary school classroom in Germany is considerably different from the kinder-
garten classroom. In German kindergarten, one class has no more than 25 chil-
les enfants, with one teacher and one assistant present at all times. In primary schools, un
teacher quite often works with 28-30 children without an assistant, and in many
schools classrooms are crowded. Traditionnellement, parents rarely come to the school
for help during the day. This meant that we had to build organizational measures
and ideas into our training to cater to this situation. Just as with the kindergarten
teachers, a minority of primary school teachers had the solid science background
knowledge that gave them confidence to try out new, modern, or different teach-
ing approaches in the field. That’s why our training has to deliver both content
knowledge and understanding, as well as science teaching methodology.
THE RECIPE FOR SUCCESS
What are the reasons that children, parents, and teachers alike are inspired by our
approach to science teaching? There are eight main factors we see as crucial to this
processus:
• We look at the world through children’s eyes. We take their interest seriously
and connect with them.
• We look at a phenomenon and come up with questions about it. It doesn’t
matter if the phenomenon belongs to the field of biology, chemistry, ou
physics. The phenomenon itself is the focal point and we try to understand as
much of it as children in that particular age are able to.
• We explore and accept various venues to find answers to our questions. Souvent
there is more than one venue and even more than one answer.
• We treat every comment and idea with respect and create positive learning
experiences.
• We use a scientific approach to investigate a phenomenon or topic—from
question to hypothesis to proof and communication.
• We come back to a topic several times and look at a phenomenon from a dif-
ferent angle or at another level. In pedagogy, that is called a spiral-type cur-
riculum.
• We give children time to explore and investigate at their own pace.
• We talk about the process, findings, and results with the children. That way we
simultaneously enhance their communication skills.
These are the factors that make all of our programs so meaningful for partici-
pants, be it the extracurricular courses or the teacher trainings. The success of
Science-Lab as an enterprise is due to a great extent to the high standard. But it is
also true that starting this venture with my friend and partner Sonja was crucial
for its ongoing success. Sharing the same understanding and values gives us the
chance to stand in for each other whenever needed. Cependant, we find it easier to
be in there together, especially in times of crisis, and to help each other master
challenges.
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Playing Catch-Up in German Early Science Education with Science-Lab
Chiffre 4. Starting at the top, the talent support is 100 percent financed through
private donors.
OVERCOMING OBSTACLES
Naturally we had and always have obstacles to overcome in building up a venture
like Science-Lab. There are basically three major challenges we have faced or are
still facing. One comes from some professionals in the field of education.
Educating the young is a task that a society has to fulfill. In Germany, cependant, le
explosive number of private schools being founded recently (Oelkers, 2007) et
the PISA results show that parents are not completely satisfied with the way this
task is being carried out, particular as Germany’s test results fall behind those of
other countries. The fact that education issues are the responsibility of 16 different
state education ministries causes many institutions to work on the same tasks in
each state. This requires more financial and personnel resources than would a
national education policy and fewer institutions. By dispersing these resources, less
money and manpower is available to transfer good ideas and research results into
pratique. En outre, entrepreneurial solutions like ours are often looked at sus-
piciously by people working in the state system because it didn’t come out of that
système. Par exemple, state decision-makers sometimes reject our approach
because they didn’t invent it, even if we partner with someone who would fully
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Heike Schettler
finance the project within a school district. The only way we can overcome such
prejudice is to work with people in the state education system who are more open
to new approaches and prove to them, through our high-quality work with teach-
ers, that their decision to trust us was right. In our experience, the pull comes from
teachers who know our work, thus we are changing the system from the bottom
en haut.
Our second major challenge is the constant fight to get our work paid for in
order to keep Science-Lab up and running. Coming back to the pyramid I
described earlier, we have three ways to finance our work. The middle part of
extracurricular courses is financed by the parents who send their children to our
afterschool program. In some cases, companies pay for courses for their employ-
ees’ children, or schools spend some of the money the state allocates to them for
afterschool activities for a Science-Lab course. We would like to achieve a financ-
ing model in which a child’s participation in an extracurricular Science-Lab course
depends on the child’s interest and not on the parents’ financial situation.
The greatest financial resources are needed for the teacher-training program.
This is a real struggle for us, as we lack access to influential decision-makers in the
16 German states and the federal government. Developing our venture in an entre-
preneurial way, we turned to businesspeople for help. We especially approached
companies that produce technology-driven products and that are searching the job
market for well-trained graduates in the fields of engineering and science. Those
graduates are hard to find in Germany these days (Reinberg & Hummel, 2003). Nous
were able to convince some of the managers to take a rather long-term perspective
and donate some of their revenues to the educational development of kinder-
gartens and primary schools within their vicinity. By now, à propos 90 percent of our
teacher trainings are financed by companies or their spin-off foundations. It may
sometimes be tedious, but this grassroots approach, in conjunction with our
exceeding expectations, has brought us the respect and the pull of people working
with us. Eventually we will have a strong enough anchor within the educational
practice so that the state system cannot ignore us.
The third challenge is the most severe and it has to do with copying our work.
Any successful concept will be copied; there is no doubt about it. A successful con-
cept should be copied in order to improve or overhaul the system. Cependant, le
copying that has occurred so far in Germany has not met the appropriate stan-
dards and thus undermines both the reputation of the original and the wider goal.
We already addressed the reluctance and fear professionals have with regard to the
natural sciences. If teachers attend trainings that reinforce all the stereotypes of sci-
ence teaching, they will turn their backs on science and feel confirmed in their
sense that they never understood anything in that field, that they don’t understand
c'est maintenant, and that they will never understand it. At that point a person is lost. Le
problem is that we most often have only one chance to reach these teachers. If a
person has a bad training experience, they won’t likely give it another try. Cependant,
if someone can adopt our approach successfully without plagiarizing it, we are
more than happy to join forces with them in the quest to change science education
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Playing Catch-Up in German Early Science Education with Science-Lab
in Germany—and wherever it is needed. To accomplish this we are working to
describe our standards and benchmarks clearly and to form strategic alliances.
MAKING IT PART OF POLICY
Our main goal is to implement high-quality science teaching in all preschools,
kindergartens, and primary schools in Germany in order to give children a sound
science foundation before they enter higher schooling. Discussions over the last
few years have led to changes in the written curricula for kindergartens and
schools. To transform the written curricula into action is the greater challenge
right now. Science-Lab aims to set the quality standards and benchmarks for that
implementation process.
FUTURE VENUES
The last seven years were extraordinarily eventful and busy. Science-Lab is current-
ly in a consolidation phase, working to ensure that the method and the quality of
science teaching for young children become established throughout the German
education system. We are regularly developing new formats as demand arises, tel
as joint workshops for parents and children or teacher trainings for special needs
teachers. We also started to go international and trained teachers from German
schools in Italy and Spain, as well as teachers from international schools in
Allemagne. The lack of implementation of science teaching in the way we do it is not
a problem unique to Germany. As we have learned at international conferences,
other countries encounter the same difficulties. Donc, we believe that we can
contribute to the process of establishing science curricula for kindergartners and
preschoolers on an international level as well.
Les références
Oelkers, J.. (2007). Schule und Wettbewerb: Neue Perspektiven für Leistung und Qualität. In Vortrag
à
sur
Schule-Wirtschaft
vor
http://www.elternlobby.ch/deutsch/argumente/pdf/oelkers_schule_wettbewerb.pdf
Septembre 3, 2009
Arbeitskreisen
Südhessen.
accessed
Biblis,
den
Reinberg, UN., & Hummel, M.. (2003). Steuert Deutschland langfristig auf einen Fachkräftemangel zu?
IAB Kurzbericht, 9, 1-8.
Blanc, M., et autres. (2001). PISA 2000 Zusammenfassung zentraler Befunde. Berlin: Max-Planck-Institut
für Bildungsforschung.
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