Abstract of the paper
Context-based learning has received much attention for fostering interest in chemistry, as has the authentic design of learning opportunities. However, the results on fostering situational interest remain largely ambiguous. In this article, an overlap between medicine as an interesting, everyday subject area and chemistry as a basis for the design of authentic contexts is explained. Three suitable contexts are outlined on the basis of design guidelines for such contexts and a narrowing down of the broad subject area based on the chemistry curriculum. One of these learning environments (on the blood and respiratory cycle) is then explained in more detail and evaluated in an initial field report with data from the student laboratory(N = 155). Finally, the future use of medical contexts is discussed.