Scientific work

Scientific Citizenship

During my career, I supervised about 40 doctoral students and postdocs, many of whom are now professors. My collaborators edited a Festschrift in which my research has been summarized: Wie guter Unterricht intelligentes Wissen schafft

During my active time at ETH Zürich, I hosted many scientific events: emerita.ifvll.ethz.ch

I participated in many scientific committees and served on editorial bords of scientific journals, among. Currently I serve as Co-Editor in Chief for the journal Learning and Instruction and as Associate Editor for the journal Intelligence.

I serve as board member of the International Society for Intelligence Research.

In 2018, I was awarded the Franz-Emanuel-Weinert-Prize of the German Society fpr Psychological Research in recognition of my contribution to science in the public interest.

Research

In the past 40 years, my interest has been in the interaction between intelligence, cognitive development and knowledge acquisition. This framework has been published  in Individual differences in the learning potential of human beings | npj Science of Learning as well as in Personality and Individual differences: Research on intelligence and learning: How to unite estranged siblings.

I predominantly considered mathematical and scientific reasoning as outcome variables in my research. In lab experiments as well as in randomized controlled field trials, my collaborators and I investigated the impact of means of cognitive activation on learning outcomes. Please find a summary of these means in Promoting the construction of intelligent knowledge with the help of various methods of cognitively activating instruction.

While individual differences in intelligence can account for variance in learning outcomes in all areas, the most important predictor is prior knowledge. In longitudinal studies on learning physics, we investigate how curricula in elementary school affect further learning, as described in the following article: Preparation for Future Conceptual Learning: Content-Specific Long-Term Effects of Early Physics Instruction.

Publikationen Elsbeth Stern

Kontakt