The present contribution combines “good practice” reports on the Regorafenib mouse promising

use of newspaper story problems in science (and mathematics) education with empirical research, based on a theoretical background on context based learning with an emphasis on narrative contexts on the one hand, and design principles inspired by anchored instruction on the other. This approach was investigated in a quasi-experimental study (on energy and energy transformations in German 10th grade classes) with a number of control measures: same teacher in treatment and control group, identical learning sequence and learning tasks (up to their fundamental format, viz. newspaper vs. conventional format), consideration of potentially influential cofactors and covariates. Instructional

material and classroom setting (time course, form of student activity) in both groups were tested for curricular validity in a physics education cooperation network, involving more than 40 teachers from various backgrounds of secondary level in the study country. Under the double constraints of classroom practice and educational research, the findings of the study contribute to the questions raised e.g. in the research synthesis of Bennett et al. (2007): as main or general effects, newspaper story problems led to improved motivation and learning, Natural Product Library concentration including transfer, with effect sizes between medium and large (motivation (total): ω2=0.52; learning/achievement (total): ω2=0.20; transfer (average): ω2=0.14). As for possible differential effects, such as possibly different outcomes for girls and boys or students of different ability, no (or weak) influences of this kind could be found. This means in particular that the absolute level of understanding attained by the low ability group being less than that of high ability group, as might be expected, their gain when learning with NSP (instead Dimethyl sulfoxide with conventional problems) turned out to be the same. Moreover, an interesting finding, viz. the gender neutrality found in PISA and supposedly attributed to story contexts ( Fensham, 2009) could be replicated. Another issue of

particular interest for science literacy (almost by its definition) is transfer of learning; here too, considerable benefits through learning with newspaper story problems have been found. In view of much more far reaching changes of the teaching script by various forms of CBSE (as described in Bennett et al. (2007), such as the STS approach of the Iowa project (Yager and Weld, 1999) or Anchored Instruction (CTGV, 1992 and CTGV, 1997) possible doubts regarding more restricted approaches such as NSP may arise, and concerns about limitations of its benefits are of particular interest, such as small size and short temporal duration of possible effects as well as too narrow a restriction of student groups profiting from them.