Cross-age science learning in the transition from elementary to primary education

In addition to science education in general, from primary school to secondary school, current educational reform efforts are focussing in particular on elementary education in pre-school educational institutions such as kindergartens and daycare centres. However, as the disciplines of early childhood education and primary school education have historically developed independently of each other and have rarely related to each other, a productive relationship between pre-school education and secondary primary school needs to be redeveloped against this background. In particular, the early, elementary exploration of the world and its didactic and methodological implementation are being scrutinised in order to develop compatible models which, on the one hand, guarantee sustainable, child-appropriate learning in the elementary sector and, on the other hand, enable a successful transition to primary school with its own educational objectives.
In the research project 'Exploring the world together', the focus is on examining the sustainability and effectiveness of cross-age factual learning and the generation of children's knowledge structures in the transition from elementary to primary education. The aim is to develop a model for cross-age subject learning based on the principles of peer tutoring. In this project, primary school children will first be trained in science content and how to interact with pre-school children in order to then implement the learning concept "Pre-school children learn from primary school children". This is a unique attempt to apply the concept of peer-education and peer-tutoring, which is already widely used for older pupils, to the transition between kindergarten and primary school for the first time. On the one hand, this builds a bridge between the institutions, which is important for a standardised educational pathway for children. On the other hand, a successful method of children learning from children is being applied here for the first time to the interface between primary school and kindergarten.

Management and implementation:
Prof. Dr Astrid Kaiser
Prof. Dr Claudia Schomaker
Iris Lüschen