Martin Wagenschein

Martin Wagenschein (3 December 1896, in Gießen[citation needed], in Germany – 3 April 1988, in Trautheim) was a science educator who worked in mathematical and scientific didactics.

He emphasised the importance of teaching students to understand rather than simply learning knowledge for its own sake.

As such he was one of precursors of modern teaching techniques such as constructivism, inquiry-based science, and inquiry learning.

Despite this, he sets the foundation for modern open learning techniques, mirroring the work of English-speaking science educationists[citation needed] such as John Dewey.

Wagenschein discovered that even highly educated people, and even students of physics, could not provide a realistic or simple explanation for even the most basic physical phenomena, despite being well qualified to do so, or being able to do so only with the use of complicated equations or language that is difficult to understand.