Prof. Dr. Elsbeth Stern
In autumn 2006, Prof. Dr. Elsbeth Stern became Full Professor of Empirical Research on Learning and Instruction as well as Head of the Institute of Behavioural Sciences at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences at ETH Zurich. In this role, she was also responsible for didactic training at ETH Zurich, which also includes high school teachers in the STEM subjects. As a cognitive psychologist, she dealt with the learning and teaching of mathematical and scientific subjects from a cognitive and learning psychology perspective. Her scientific work focused on the acquisition, modification and use of knowledge to meet new requirements. In doing so, she also investigates the influence of differences in intelligence on learning. She studied psychology in Marburg and Hamburg. After completing her doctoral thesis at the University of Hamburg in 1986, she worked at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research in Munich and became a professor at the University of Leipzig in 1994. In 1997, she moved to the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. On 1 February 2025, she retired from ETH Zurich.
In her research group, experiments and large-scale longitudinal studies were conducted to investigate how pupils from primary and secondary schools make use of cognitively activating learning opportunities depending on intelligence and prior knowledge.
Her research results have been published in more than 300 articles, many of them in high-ranking international journals. She has contributed to quality control as a member of the editorial board of several high-ranking journals and as a reviewer in various scientific contexts. She became known beyond the boundaries of science through interviews and media contributions on current topics in education, including her criticism of the pseudo-scientific marketing of neuroscience. For this, she was awarded the Franz Emanuel Weinert Prize of the German Psychological Society in 2018.