Christoph Mischo

Prof. Dr. Christoph Mischo has been Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Education Freiburg (Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg) since October 2004. He is based in the Department of Developmental Psychology and Diagnostics within the Institute of Psychology.

Education: After studying psychology at the universities of Freiburg and Heidelberg, he obtained his Diplom in 1994 and his doctoral degree (Dr. phil.) in 1999 under the supervision of Prof. Dr. N. Groeben and Prof. Dr. C. F. Graumann. In 2005 he completed his Habilitation at the University of Bamberg.

Research Interests: His work is organised around five major strands:

• Early-childhood educational professionalism: professional vision of day-care staff, competence development during training and career entry.
• Pedagogical psychology: learning motivation, homework, tutoring, cooperative learning, teaching and learning of mathematical modelling.
• Developmental psychology: social-cognitive and cognitive development in young children.
• Social psychology: argumentation processes and subjective theories.
• Education for Sustainable Development (ESD): fostering systems thinking and sustainability competencies.

Research Projects & Funding: Mischo has continuously acquired external funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, and the Baden-Württemberg Foundation for Nature Conservation. Notable projects include the longitudinal DFG study “Professional Vision in Day-care Centres (ProWaK)”, the BMBF project “AVE – Training and Development of Child-care Staff Characteristics”, and multi-year studies on implementing ESD in schools.

Scientific Output & Impact: Since 2020 he has published more than 25 peer-reviewed articles in leading journals such as Teaching and Teacher Education, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Sustainability, Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie, and Early Years. His work is characterised by cross-cultural, intervention and longitudinal designs that bridge developmental, educational and social psychology.

Teaching & Supervision: He regularly teaches developmental psychology, diagnostics and educational psychology in initial teacher-training programmes, the B.A. “Education and Upbringing”, and the M.A. “Educational Psychology”. He has supervised numerous doctoral and master’s students whose names appear as co-authors on his publications (e.g., Svenja Peters, Katrin Wolstein, Eva-Maria Waltner, Carina Wolf, Magdalena Plöger-Werner).

Consultation & Collaboration: Consultation hours are by appointment via email. His research group collaborates with colleagues across Germany (e.g., University of Tübingen, University of Bamberg) and internationally, and he is a member of several interdisciplinary research networks focusing on professionalisation in early childhood education and on education for sustainable development.