2026 Dissertation Award: Dr. Ronja Sowinski – What Fall Leaves Reveal About Good Teaching

Climate change is to blame. The sun tans leaves just like it tans skin. Leaves are structured like a pyramid. Students have very different ideas about fall leaves. “Until now, we believed that abstraction was the biggest problem—for example, when it comes to molecular decomposition processes,” explains Dr. Ronja Sowinski. But in fact, their ideas are much more diverse. The result is also linked to the increasing diversity in German classrooms. “For example, there are now many children and teenagers who come from countries where deciduous trees don’t grow—and therefore leaves don’t fall,” explains Ronja Sowinski. For classroom practice, this means that a lesson plan that draws solely on a common perception may not reach those who come from very different backgrounds and experiences. 

After completing her teacher training in Hanover and Hamburg, majoring in biology and German for high school teaching, Ronja Sowinski initially taught at the middle school level: “But I realized that I didn’t just want to pass on knowledge; I also wanted to contribute to new insights myself.” She applied to Leuphana University and wrote her cumulative doctoral dissertation in science education under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Simone Abels. 

For her exploratory study, she surveyed 24 students in the ninth and tenth grades from five classes at four comprehensive schools. She also involved the teachers to better contextualize the students’ responses. “Many students thanked me for including their views in my research. Those were special moments,” recalls Ronja Sowinski. She deliberately chose schools whose perspectives, in her experience, are too rarely heard in research. 

In terms of content, Ronja Sowinski contrasted two topics: leaf decomposition as a process that can supposedly be experienced directly, and the immune response to the flu as an abstract process within the body. But even leaf decomposition proved to require explanation: “Students without Central European roots, for example, linked what they had learned from television or social media about climate change to the falling leaves.” One explanation: The leaves were sick, contained harmful carbon dioxide, and poisoned the animals that ate them. Another idea, also related to climate change: The leaves were browned by the sun, just like skin. Another girl with a North African immigrant background explained the structure of a leaf using the layers of a pyramid. 

At the same time, Ronja Sowinski examined the significance of metaphors, particularly in relation to students’ multilingualism. “The natural sciences, in particular, use many images to make abstract processes visible and understandable,” she explains.

However, the researcher was unable to identify a pattern here. Even adolescents with the same first language used metaphors in very different ways. The results point to individual experiences and interpretations: “The metaphors demonstrate once again that we may not be able to make sweeping generalizations about language groups.” Rather, the findings underscore the need for empathetic and interculturally open instruction from which everyone benefits: “If you want to understand how young people learn, you first have to figure out how they make sense of the world,” says the biology educator.

Ronja Sowinski currently works as a research associate at the Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN) in Kiel.