Participation in decision-making is the fundamental principle of any democratic structure. It is also a central prerequisite for effective learning arrangements in order to support individual learning processes. Numerous studies point out the importance of students’ participation in addressing learning heterogeneity. In addition, a growing body of researchers, practitioners, and politicians argue that students’ democratic competencies must strongly be fostered.

Formal teaching-learning arrangements are, however, usually characterized by a high degree of external determination, which makes it difficult to develop individual decision-making competencies. Current teaching-learning arrangements in schools and universities focus on the learner (so-called learner-centered approaches). Nevertheless, there is a lack of empirical knowledge about the causal relationship between participatory elements in formal teaching-learning arrangements and learners’ individual learning processes and outcomes.

This research project therefore addresses the research question regarding the influence of different stages of students’ participation in lessons in higher education on their learning process. The project provides a first and comprehensive experimental pre-post-test design with a follow-up test, in which students of different treatment groups receive different opportunities to participate in forming and structuring their individual learning process during formal learning sequences.

This experimental design is the first in higher education to offer insights into causal effects of different stages of participation on students’ learning process and outcomes. Against this background, it provides important empirical basic knowledge for the much-discussed and increasingly widespread use of modern, student-centered teaching-learning approaches in higher education, such as flipped classrooms.

Conducting experimental studies in schools or universities always comes with many risks and unpredictable circumstances, which is the main reason why there are virtually no experimental studies with high qualitative standards. This leads to an empirical basis characterized by a lack of data regarding both its internal and external validity. This project aims to close this research gap.