“Welcome Aboard!”“We need to consider the emotions and well-being of learners.”Prof. Dr. Stephanie strengthens the Faculty of Education.

1 March 2022, by Lichtenfeld/Gießelmann

Photo: Private

Prof. Dr. Stephanie took up her professorship at Universität Hamburg in March 2022.

Every year, Universität Hamburg welcomes numerous new researchers. This series introduces them and their areas of research. This time: educational scientist Prof. Dr. Stephanie Lichtenfeld

Prof. Dr. Stephanie Lichtenfeld, formerly from the University of Durham, came to Hamburg on 1 March 2022 to take up her professorship for pedagogical psychology, including developmental psychology and socialization, at the Faculty of Education.

My research area in 3 sentences:

The central concern of my research is emotional experience and motivational aspects of learning and achievement. For example, I am interested in the development of emotions and motivation during primary school years and their impact on academic achievement. We have discovered in longitudinal studies that joy decreases throughout primary school while boredom and fear remain relatively constant and fairly low.

I also study the foundational mechanisms for the emergence of emotions and their impact on motivation and achievement using experimental studies.

Another topic that I find especially interesting with regard to the pandemic is to what extent the ability to tolerate uncertainty plays a role in our emotional experience and whether there are possibilities for better tolerating and navigating uncertainties.

I explain what I do to friends and family as follows:

Researchers are always trying to find answers to questions. The following questions interest me especially in my own research: How do children feel at school? How much do our feelings influence how we do our work and learn? How do our feelings develop throughout our schooling and in our university studies? What factors influence these developments? And what is the connection between emotions, motivation, and achievement in a given subject?

I mainly use these methods:

In my studies, I try to illuminate topics in emotional and motivation psychology from the most varied perspectives. I use both correlative cross-sectional and longitudinal studies and I do experiments and try in this way to bring together the strengths of experimental research (insight into causality) and applied research (ecological validity) in a common research program.

My research is important for society because:

Especially in times like these, in which we are confronted with the grave consequences of the pandemic, I think it is extremely important to focus on the emotional experiences and well-being of children, adolescents, and young adults. Currently, there is much debate about how to fill knowledge gaps, how to address social inequalities in academic performance, and how to adjust evaluation standards to do justice to the situation.I think, however, that it is just as crucial to keep the mental health of schoolchildren and university students in mind and to think about how we can foster positive emotions and reduce stress and negative emotions.

These are my plans at Universität Hamburg:

At Universität Hamburg, there is already a great variety of initiatives, institutions, and structures. I would like to dock onto these in my own research and with my own teaching concepts and to develop my ideas in cooperation with my colleagues. I would especially like to become active in promoting research quality and research transparency at Universität Hamburg with the aim of further implementing transparent and replicable research in our academic system.

This is why students should come to my lectures:

I am looking forward to discussing central psychological issues relevant to learning and achievement with my students and I hope to inspire them with my own enthusiasm for psychological questions. When I teach, it is especially important to me to foster both research and practice and to create a balance between theory and practice. This balance should shift back and forth equally between basic knowledge and application and enable students to find out which theories are not merely correct or empirically sound but to what extent these theories prove promising when applied.

Reaching out to the world: I work with the following international and federal institutions and universities:

In my research and teaching, I place a lot of value on international contacts and cooperation and in the last few years I have established a network of international connections. I have intensive contact to the United States, Australia, and other countries in Europe, for example Italy and Spain. In the past few years, I have now also made numerous contacts, of course, in England. Expanding upon this network is one of my big goals.

In Hamburg, the city and the University, I am looking forward to:

I am especially looking forward to cooperating with my friendly colleagues, whom I have already had an opportunity to meet, and to initiate new cooperation, and to exciting discussions with students!

See the Faculty of Education website for an in-depth interview with Prof. Dr. Lichtenfeld.