The acknowledgment of heterogeneity in groups of learners is imperative in education and is seen as a great potential for education. Principally, heterogeneity in learning groups is caused by individual students. However, it has also increased due to restructuring in the educational system (comprehensive and community schools), students with a range of language proficiencies (migration) and the desire for inclusive education. These changes have increased the importance of differentiation (internal differentiation) in the classroom and the professionalization of teachers. The design of individual learning opportunities can be put into practice in different ways. This project addresses differentiation regarding student performance (individual performance training). School education should teach the basics of natural sciences. Scientific methods of cognition, such as experimentation, are of great importance in teaching. Students should develop an understanding of the experimental method (learning about science) and the respective competences to apply it (skills and abilities: Doing science). In the acquisition of competences relevant for experimentation, content competences (What is an experiment? How is the experimental process structured? etc.) and procedural competences (ability to pose questions, generate hypotheses, conduct experiments etc.) can be distinguished. While many differentiation concepts and practice examples exist for content competences, these are missing for procedural competences (especially for experimentation). This need is being addressed in the project. The project partners will contribute their different expertise to develop a differentiation concept for performance differentiation in inquiry-based learning with a focus on experimentation. The development focus is on procedural competences. By a differentiation concept we understand the description of different task types (based on individual learning levels) for the individual sub-processes of the experimental process. The task types enable the further development of partial competences. If the task types are provided with concrete learning content, exercises can be created. The sub-processes of the experimental process are: developing a question, generating a hypothesis, planning an experiment, conducting an experiment, evaluating an experiment, drawing conclusions. To elaborate the concept, the need for differentiation at schools will be identified and the national analyses conducted earlier will be combined into a transnational analysis in the context of meetings and observations. Since the differentiation concept will be developed by project staff from four European countries, experts in didactics and methodology and teachers, it can be used all over Europe. Particular attention is given to the cooperation with schools as project partners who test and evaluate the concept and the respective teaching materials. The differentiation concept for experimenting is presented in a manual providing practical examples and teaching materials for clarification. The manual is intended to serve teachers, student teachers and students as a reference book and to build up knowledge. In order to introduce the manual into school practice, it will be used to develop seminars which are then presented to science teacher students and in-service training programs. The seminars and in-service trainings will be established at the universities of the project partners. The publication (open resource) of the manual and the pre- and in-service training are intended to promote the professionalization of teachers and thus improve school practice.
With regard to the relevance of a differentiation concept for procedural competencies for inquiry-based learning, our objectives were: Objective 1: To bring together the expertise of the project partners – subject-didactic and school practice – in order to create the basis for developing a differentiation concept for inquiry-based learning with a focus on experimentation for teaching practice. Objective 2: Development of a differentiation concept for lower secondary education (pupils between the ages of 9 and 17), which supports the learning of competences in order to independently plan and carry out problem-oriented experiments. These competences relate to the educational standards of the individual partner countries. Objective 3: Description of the newly developed differentiation concept in a manual (in the languages German, English, Finnish, Greek). The handbook should contain all information on the concept for teacher students and teachers as well as teaching materials. Objective 4: Development of training and further education activities for teacher students and in-service teachers in order to get to know the new differentiation concept and to be able to put it into practice. Objective 5: Dissemination of the concept.
Inner differentiation is normatively a teaching principle and therefore relevant for all teaching subjects. In the inner differentiation, the learners of a learning group (e.g., a class) are offered different learning material, different aids, or learning paths to make the learning success of each individual the greatest possible. Concepts for inner differentiation with regard to differences in learner performance (performance differentiation) exist mainly for content-related competences, reading competence, writing competence and mathematical competences. Differentiation concepts for the promotion of procedural competences in science subjects have so far only been developed rudimentarily. This despite the fact that the importance of procedural competences in science subjects is undisputed, especially in the context of inquiry-based learning; experimentation as an inquiry method occupies a special position here. The expert report to the European Commission "Science Education for Responsible Citizenship" (Hazelkorn et al., 2015) recommends a stronger practice of inquiry-based approaches in science education.