Teacher training plays a central role in higher education, since well-qualified teachers play a key role in discovering and promoting young talent in the school sector. Since its modularization and reform in 2009, teacher training at the University of Jena has established itself in Thuringia and is now also known throughout Germany—especially for its early implementation of a practical semester. The aim of the project Digitale Professionalisierung im Lehramtsstudium – Individuell. Kollaborativ. Kompetenzorientiert (Digital Professionalization in Teacher Training—Individual. Collaborative. Competence-Oriented, DIKoKo) is to support the reformed accompanying study programme in educational science in the winter semester 2018/19 with a digitization strategy. The aim is to provide innovative digital teaching/learning formats designed from a perspective of higher education didactics for the evidence-based and professionally oriented study content. The core of the project is to integrate digital tools for teaching and learning into the corresponding modules in a targeted manner in order to prepare the future teachers for the changed conditions and digital challenges of everyday professional life already during their studies.
The aim of the project is to provide all students in teacher training programmes (grammar school and regular school teaching profession) with opportunities to acquire their knowledge and skills by means of blended learning and online courses in different event formats in the course of their studies—in addition to the previously exclusively classroom-based courses. The flipped classroom approach is used in particular in the introductory study phase; task processing and reflection phases (by means of an online platform) are to support the sustainable acquisition of knowledge. What makes the approach unique for a teacher training programme at a university in Germany covering all disciplines is the use of peer- and team-teaching oriented video feedback (Gröschner et al., 2018). Here, micro-teaching is used to test professional learning opportunities for teaching—in a theory-based, action-oriented way that promotes reflection on the topic of classroom communication. The experiences of the practical training come to bear in seminar forms, in which certain topics—based on interests—are deepened by means of individual and collaborative activities.
Parallel to the DIKoKo project—from January 2019—further (digitally supported) learning opportunities for teacher training and schools of the future will be offered in the newly founded ‘Learning to Teach-Lab: Science (LTL:S)’ at the Institute of Educational Science (headed by Prof. Dr Alexander Gröschner)
More information at: https://www.teach.uni-jena.de/en
Contact persons:
Prof. Dr Alexander Gröschner
Email: alexander.groeschner@uni-jena.de
Phone: +49 3641-945350
Prof. Dr Nils Berkemeyer
Email: nils.berkemeyer@uni-jena.de
Phone: +49 3641-945360