Modelling with Heuristic Worked Examples in the KOMMA Learning Environment

Modelling competency is considered to be an important part of mathematical competency. Although much work has been done with respect to the development and dissemination of modelling tasks, there is hardly any empirical evidence how these tasks should be integrated in the mathematics classroom. In this article we present a teaching approach based on heuristic worked examples which turned out to be a promising way of supporting initial skill acquisition within the field of modelling. We will provide an overview how the learning environment (KOMMA) was conceptualized and will present first results of a large-scale field study examining the effectiveness of example based learning for initial skill acquisition in the field of modelling. The results presented here take into account short-term as well as long-term effects on the learning of 8th-grade students. They suggest, that the participants' modelling competencies increased significantly during the training but that long-term effects were much smaller.