The Leibniz Institute for Science Education (IPN) / Germany

Zur deutschen PARSEL-Seite

The homepage of the institute

The Leibniz Institute for Science Education (IPN)
was founded in 1968 as a research centre for science education. As an institute of the Leibniz Association with a nationwide function, IPN gets basic funds from the federal government and the commission of German states (Länder) and is also affiliated to the University of Kiel. The institute’s mission is to develop and promote science education through research, which deals with the full scope of issues concerning teaching and learning in the sciences inside and outside schools. The institute comprises four departments: Educational Science (including Research Methodology and Statistics), Biology Education, Chemistry Education, and Physics Education. Approximately 150 people make up the IPN staff; about 110 persons are working as scientists with a university degree, including 60 doctoral students. About 50% of the staff is working on projects funded by different research foundations or clients.

IPN’s tasks range across the entire field of science and technology education. IPN concentrates on long-term and nationwide research projects, which cannot be covered by universities (e.g. national and international surveys, conceptions of scientific literacy or standards for science education, comparative video studies, innovative concepts for science teaching (systemic approaches to earth sciences, contextualized chemistry, physics and biology instruction, etc));

Besides its research activities, IPN offers different services - coordination of national and international student competitions in biology, chemistry, physics and environmental issues, programmes for teacher education, documentation of curricula, publications on science education addressing teachers and scientists.

Dr. Wolfgang Gräber, senior researcher at IPN, which he joined in 1987, (chemistry diploma 1975, preservice teacher training 1975 to 1977, school teacher for 10 years (1973 to 1983), dissertation 1982) focussed with his research activities on cognitive development, students’ interest, STS-approaches and scientific literacy, computer assisted learning, school industry partnerships. His main interest lies in arbitrating between science and society, preparing students for their life in society through school science. During the last decade he organized two international symposia on scientific literacy, and worked as principal researcher on projects like ParCIS (Partnership Chemical Industry School), ParIS (Partnership Industry School), Voneinander Lernen (Learning from Each Other), IFUN (Interest and Integrated Science Teaching, principal co-researcher), which were all enabled through external funds.

Dr. Martin Lindner is working at the IPN together with Wolfgang Gräber in PARSEL´s project mangament and overall coordination including the webside. Beside the work in PARSEL he is leading coordinator of the SINUS-Programme ('Increasing the efficiency of science and mathematics instruction') in Schleswig-Holstein, the northern state of Germany since 2000. He is also member of the project staff of Chemistry in Context and coordinates four of the 16 states joining this programme nationwide. One of his major acitivities is the implementation of national standards in Biology, Chemistry and Physics in Schleswig-Holstein. His professional development includes 10 years of teaching at a High-School and 7 years in working as a lecturer in biology teacher education at the IPN and the University of Flensburg.