The flipped classroom teaching concept is more than just a change from traditional teaching – particularly in times of Corona, it really does make better learning possible. This is the conclusion the Passau educationalist Dr Marlene Wagner comes to in her doctoral thesis, in which she scientifically examines the effectiveness of the flipped classroom concept on the success secondary level pupils have in learning. The English-language article about her work, which was supervised by Professor Detlef Urhahne, appeared in the reputable "Journal of Educational Psychology".
The Passau educationalist Dr. Marlene Wagner was a research associate at the Professorship of Educational Psychology at the University of Passau from 2017 to 2020.
'The Corona pandemic has rendered radical changes in the education system necessary to ensure continuity in guaranteeing schooling for the young generation', explains the researcher. So many schools, and universities too, are now going for a close meshing together of classroom teaching and distance learning.
Flipped classroom is a teaching concept which can be used to ensure tuition in times of Corona. With the aid of explanatory video clips, pupils can assimilate knowledge at home, and this is then dealt with more intensively in phases of classroom teaching by means of appropriate learning tasks. In a meta-analysis, Wagner has quantitatively summarised and re-evaluated the state of research into the flipped classroom teaching concept. Her results have confirmed its effectiveness for better learning as compared with traditional teaching.
Great interest in Wagner's research
In only a short time, Wagner's meta-analysis has attained a high publicity profile. For example, the research team has been contacted by the renowned New Zealand educational researcher John Hattie who, in his pioneering book "Visible Learning", has developed a ranking list of various different factors that influence pupils' success in learning, which he continually updates on the basis of more recent studies. Moreover, the meta-analysis has also been picked up by the Clearing House Tuition facility at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), which pursues the aim of condensing current scientific insights into effective teaching at secondary level and processing them in a way that caters to the respective target groups for teacher training. And the meta-analysis of flipped classroom was also mentioned in the 5th ad-hoc statement on the Coronavirus pandemic ("for a crisis-resistant education system") by the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. In the paper, educational research experts highlight measures that are suitable for rendering the existing education system more resistant and more flexible under crisis conditions.
