Research and projects
The research project DynaMINT (Dynamics of MINT-related educational and career decisions of children and young people) is investigating how the educational pathways and career aspiration processes of children and young people are shaped over the course of lower secondary school - with a focus on the fields of mathematics, computer and natural sciences, and technology (MINT). To this end, the participating pupils will be surveyed as part of the two studies DynaMINTA and DynaMINTB from January 2025 to July 2026.
The research project is funded by the Wittenstein Foundation.
As part of the federal funding programme "Aktionsprogramm Aufholen nach Corona für Kinder und Jugendliche" ("Ease Corona for Children and Young People"), the M!ND Centre implements four projects for children and young people in 2022. The projects aim to reach in particular those children and young people who have an increased need to catch up in terms of their interest in and motivation to engage with maths and science topics following the pandemic-related restrictions.
GeT-in (project manager: Dr Katja Weirauch)
The pandemic has particularly affected children and young people with special needs, as all therapies and support services for the children have been severely restricted or cancelled completely. The primary aim of the GeT-in project is to support these children and young people towards scientific literacy and to make access to the content as low-threshold and individualised as possible. In addition to an explicitly inclusive experimentation programme on everyday chemistry topics, the project therefore also provides for the transport of children and young people to and from the chemistry research club.
Labs4Future (project manager: Dr Markus Elsholz)
Why is climate said to undergo a "crisis" and what can we do to positively address climate change? The Labs4Future project offers children and young people aged 13-15 a two-day interdisciplinary workshop on these key questions, in which they conduct experiments to explore various aspects of climate change and learn how they can proactively help shape their own (climate) future.
Wue_MatLab (project manager: Prof Dr Hans-Stefan Siller)
The Wue_MatLab project is aimed at talented and interested children and young people who would like to take a closer look at application-orientated mathematics. In the environment of a maths laboratory, real-life applications of mathematics are experienced and the benefits of the beauty of this discipline in everyday life are realised.
WueSciFair (project manager: Dr Markus Elsholz)
The WueSciFair project is aimed at children and young people from year 7 onwards. Supervised by student teachers, they find and formulate their own "small" research question, which they investigate at home and in the students' lab at the MIND Centre. The student teachers accompany the research process of the children and young people from the development of a suitable methodology to the evaluation and interpretation of the results. At the end of the project, the attendees present their research results at a science fair. Attractive prizes await the best teams.
Conducting experiments at school is almost incompatible with the current pandemic distancing rules. Only few schools are likely to have the resources to give pupils individualised experimentation materials to take home.
These considerations have led the lecturers at the M!ND Centre at the University of Würzburg to develop a digital format for schools building on the internationally proven format Virtual Science Fair (VSF). Our aim is to give at least some pupils the opportunity to do practical scientific work during the coronavirus pandemic. The offer is aimed at students in grades 7 and 8.
In cooperation with the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, the Technische Universität Kaiserslautern and the Universität Koblenz-Landau, the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg has been selected from a total of 26 other applicants for a Deutsche Telekom Stiftung funding project.
The task of the universities' research alliance is to come up with new, motivating concepts for science lessons in conjunction with digital media. Such new concepts are being tested in cooperation with the Chair of Human-Computer Interaction, the Chair of School Pedagogy and the M!ND Centre at the University of Würzburg, which represents the teacher education departments of biology, chemistry, geography, computer science, mathematics and physics. On the one hand, pupils gain an insight into the concepts of tomorrow and, on the other, current student teachers learn how to use the new technology and can utilise it in their future lessons.
The aim of the cooperative project between the M!ND Centre and the Chairs of Systematic Educational Science and Physics Education at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg is to substantially promote the idea of combining philosophical and scientific topics in schools as well as in extracurricular areas as well as to promote the phil:MINT network. The project is funded by the Bayerische Sparkassenstiftung.
