"Now, where does all the wood come from?" - Inspired by "Lessons from Thin Air", most learners do have severe problems in answering questions about the mass increase of trees. Is this due to "nutrients" in the soil or is air used to produce wood?

Learners' conceptions about plant nutrition and photosynthesis do often digress from scientific concepts. Using the model of educational reconstruction, the project's goal is 1) to identify and interprete learners' conceptions towards plant nutrition and photosynthesis (qualitative approach, guided interviews). These results were(2)  juxtaposed with scientists' concepts and ideas in order to (3) derive suitable learning environments and structures. Thus, the developed structure "dissimilation-before-assimilation" lead via teaching experiments to the possibility to reconstruct individual learning pathways. Results show that this structure has great potential to foster learning processes when it comes to the understanding of plant nutrition and photosynthesis. Forthcoming studies will set focus on longitudinal and quantitative aspects to proof the studie's results. (see  PIM-Project).