Information

Principal Investigators: A. Budke, F. Schäbitz

To compare is a fundamental and very useful activity in class education for all school subjects. In everyday school life, students often have to compare different topics, questions, problems or media to understand subject specific knowledge and to gain higher-level competencies. Comparisons are helpful to structure complex contexts and prepare for thinking systematically. Using comparisons as a tool makes it straightforward to differentiate between the specific and the general and to transfer new knowledge to other contexts.
Despite the great overall importance of comparisons in education, there are hardly any scientific publications available. Several studies on the method of comparison in different sciences have been published, but none of them has been used, tested or studied for their transfer to school education. Thus, the aim of this project is to develop a concept for using comparison as a tool for Geography education, specifically regarding the dimensions of scale, space, time and method. Furthermore, we will conduct empirical studies focusing on the effect of comparisons for the learning process, the problems students have using comparisons, how students do the comparisons and the role of argumentation in the processes of comparison. For the empirical studies, we will design school class materials which will be based on the outcomes of the different CRC 806’ projects.