IT practice
When knowledge has to hold
Complex IT environments quickly reveal whether knowledge still holds when decisions are made under time pressure and risks have to be weighed.
IT Practice · Education · Research
When does understanding become reliable action?
Most people know situations in which something seems clear — until they have to apply it themselves. That moment is where my work begins.
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I work at the intersection of IT practice, vocational education and applied research. What interests me is the space between the feeling of understanding and acting with confidence.
Practice raises the questions. Research looks for answers.
This website documents an evolving research journey, not its conclusion
The Question
My research did not begin with a research agenda.
All I needed was a topic for my bachelor thesis. Diving led me to learning, and the literature led me to technology acceptance. I chose UTAUT2 because it was well researched, widely used and a reasonable foundation for me at the time. The decision was pragmatic.
The turning point came later. An exploratory statistical analysis pointed to the possibility that perceived understanding and readiness to apply might not fully coincide. That was neither proof nor a planned discovery. It was a finding I could not explain.
What happens between understanding and actually taking action?
How I research
I do not start with a model. I start with an observation.
Models are tools, not truths. The method follows the question — not the other way around.
Observation
Something usually catches my attention in practice that I cannot explain conclusively — in projects, in teaching, in conversations.
Question
When an observation stays with me, I start turning it into a question. Not every observation becomes a study.
Literature & model
I review existing approaches and look for the tool that fits the question — not the model that happens to be available.
Method
I do not decide upfront whether a study will be qualitative or quantitative. What matters is what kind of insight the question allows in the first place.
Empirical work
Uncertainty and not-knowing are named openly. I never claim more than can be supported or honestly defended.
New insight — new question
Not every study delivers a clear answer. Sometimes its most important result is being able to phrase the next question more precisely.
The Finding
A signal I could not explain.
People can be convinced they have understood something — and still feel uncertain when they have to apply it. Acceptance and perceived usefulness of a learning format probably do not say enough about whether knowledge holds up under real conditions.
Scientific framing
The finding is exploratory. It is not proof — and that is exactly why it is the starting point.
- it did not emerge from hypotheses, but from an exploratory analysis
- it has not been conclusively explained to this day
- first understand qualitatively, then operationalise constructs, and only then test quantitatively
What counts as a cautious working hypothesis
- Understanding and confident application may not coincide.
- Uncertainty, time pressure, responsibility and experience could shape the transition from understanding to action.
- Technical competence shows not only in knowledge, but in reading situations and justifying decisions.
What remains open
- Whether the observed gap can be demonstrated reliably across different groups and contexts.
- Whether it is one coherent phenomenon or several distinct causes.
- How reliable action can be measured validly without reducing it to self-assessment.
I
Is there a robust gap between perceived understanding and professional readiness to act?
II
What changes once uncertainty, time pressure and responsibility come into play?
Cybersecurity is a particularly demanding context here: decisions under uncertainty, time pressure, responsibility and high complexity.
III
How must digital learning formats be designed so that knowledge holds up in practice?
Next methodological step: qualitative interviews with perspectives from vocational education, higher education and IT practice — followed by construct development and targeted quantitative testing.
Practice & Teaching
Three perspectives, one question.
For me, practice is not a field of application. It is where my research questions emerge — in technical projects, in teaching, in situations under time pressure and responsibility.
Education & teaching
Understanding is not the goal
I am not only interested in whether content was understood. What matters is whether people can read a situation and keep working without a model solution.
Research
The transition in between
I study how learning, uncertainty, experience and responsibility shape the transition from understanding to action.
Publications
Two works are public. The rest is on its way.
Warum Virtual Labs pädagogische Akzeptanz brauchen!
Warum technische Lernumgebungen nur dann wirksam werden, wenn sie didaktisch sinnvoll eingebettet und von den Lernenden angenommen werden.
Sven Steinhardt und Lars Ritter
doi.org/10.1365/s35764-026-00608-2 →Zwischen Kompetenzgefühl und Handlungssicherheit
Ein explorativer Beitrag zur möglichen Lücke zwischen wahrgenommenem Verstehen und beruflicher Anwendungsbereitschaft.
Sven Steinhardt und Marcel Dulgeridis
doi.org/10.56250/4141 →Further work will only be added after publication. Manuscripts in development or under review are deliberately not presented here as publications.
Away from the desk
Under water, it shows what holds.
Technical diving demands preparation, redundancy and decisions made under time pressure, with incomplete information and real consequences. Knowing the procedures is not enough there. They have to work under load.
With DiveWithSteini I run my own dive school. It deliberately stays in the background here. But the question is the same one that drives my research.
Contact
Exchange often begins with a good question.
I welcome dialogue with people from research, education and IT practice. Perhaps you see one of my questions differently — that is exactly the conversation worth having.
- Professional action capability
- Human factors
- Digital learning
- Cybersecurity
- Research collaboration
- Talks & teaching formats