Monitor teacher training: Kassel concept of training for the teaching profession exemplary

In its recently published overview of teacher education structures at German universities, the Monitor Lehrerbildung recommends institutionalizing cooperation between subject-specific science, subject-specific didactics and educational science. The Kassel concept PRONET is cited as a "best practice" example. This joint concept of the Center for Teacher Education (ZLB) and the Center for Empirical Teaching/Learning Research (ZELL) of the university aims at "professionalization through networking". It provides for linking subject-specific, subject-didactic and educational science study content in such a way that they complement and deepen each other. 

In concrete terms, this means, for example: A physics teacher trainee deals with magnetism in a subject-specific course; accompanying or following this, the physics didactics department offers a seminar on students' ideas about magnetism and how these can be further developed on the basis of science. With PRONET, the University of Kassel won the first round of the "Quality Offensive Teacher Education" call for proposals in March 2015 and received 5.6 million euros in financial support. 

"The CHE's praise confirms once again that we are taking the right path with this interlinking," said a pleased Prof. Dr. Dorit Bosse, Chair of the Center for Teacher Education. "Young people can be sure that they can take up teacher training studies with us at the highest level and according to the latest findings." Prof. Dr. Frank Lipowsky, executive director of the Center for Empirical Teaching/Learning Research, added: "At more and more universities, the realization is now gaining ground that teacher education gains significantly in quality through the linking of didactics and subject science as well as feedback with the results of educational research. PRONET now consistently transfers this idea into the structures of teaching at the University of Kassel."

University of Kassel has unique selling points

The Monitor Lehrerbildung is the only database on teacher training in Germany. The project is supported by the CHE Center for Higher Education Development, the Bertelsmann Foundation, the Deutsche Telekom Foundation and the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft. According to the Monitor Lehrerbildung, 67 of 71 German universities that offer teacher training participated in the data collection on which the publication is based.

About one fifth of all students at the University of Kassel are teacher candidates. One of the strengths of teacher training in Kassel is that all subject areas have a subject didactics assigned to them - so the subject areas of physics are joined by a subject didactics of physics, etc. Other unique selling points are the large number of study workshops (laboratories where, among other things, innovative teaching methods are tested with school classes) and a strong cluster of educational research institutions that feed the latest findings into teacher education.

Monitor Teacher Education :
www.monitor-lehrerbildung.de/web/publikationen/strukturen
 

"Teacher Education at the University of Kassel Convinces," University of Kassel press release, March 2015:
http://www.uni-kassel.de/uni/nc/universitaet/nachrichten/article/lehrerbildung-an-der-uni-kassel-ueberzeugt-millionenfoerderung-durch-qualitaetsoffensive.html

Contact:

Prof. Dr. Dorit Bosse
University of Kassel
Center for Teacher Education
Tel.: +49 561 804-2324
E-mail: zlb[at]uni-kassel[dot]de

Prof. Dr. Frank Lipowsky
University of Kassel
Center for Empirical Teaching/Learning Research
Tel.: +49 561 804-3613
E-Mail: lipowsky[at]uni-kassel[dot]de

Sebastian Mense
University of Kassel
Communication, Press and Public Relations
Tel.: +49 561 804-1961
E-Mail: presse[at]uni-kassel[dot]de