Integrated Study Programme M.Ed. Vocational Education and Teacher Training
In ‘Integrated Study Programme M.Ed. Vocational Education and Teacher Training‘, pre-service teachers are prepared in one vocational teaching subject (either metal technology or electrical engineering and information technology) and one STEM teaching subject (mathematics or physics). This particular master’s program is not like the traditional study programs in the teacher education system in Germany, which consist of two training phases. The first phase includes university education that focuses on the acquisition of theory, and in the second, the teacher induction, theory is applied to practice. In this three-year long training program, teacher educators of both training phases collaborate with each other and frequently provide courses jointly. This results in an optimised linkage between theory and practice, as well as an improved quality of teacher training. Thereby, both training phases are interconnected and redundancies in the learning content may be prevented. Additionally, training time is reduced without the need for any restrictions in training quality.
The first cohort of the ‘Integrated Study Programme M.Ed. Vocational Education and Teacher Training’ started in the winter semester of 2016/17. The 6th cohort will start in the winter semester 2021/22.
Thanks to a shorter training time and the recognition of an appropriate Bachelor's degree, this training program is more attractive for a group of students that has been barely targeted so far. This group consists of college graduates with a pedagogical potential, who are recruited for a specialized and efficient professional training that prepares them to teach metal technology or electrical engineering and information technology at vocational schools. This study program, thus, contributes to meet the strong teachers shortage in the two vocational teaching subjects for years now.
The ‘Integrated Study Programme M.Ed. Vocational Education and Teacher Training’ is a pilot project in teacher education at vocational schools that explores possibilities for curricular and structural optimization by connecting with each other: one university-based and one school-based training. Teacher educators from training settings collaborate with each other in order to synchronize university’s opportunities to acquire professional knowledge with practical experiences in teacher induction. The results of this pilot project can be used to the further develop pre-service teacher education and teacher induction in other subjects. The consolidation of the ‘Integrated Study Programme M.Ed. Vocational Education and Teacher Training’ is planned.
Alongside the project, research studies are conducted on pre-service teachers’ professional development as well as evaluation studies on the optimization of the study program design. A teacher professional development model was developed for the investigated target group based on existing theoretical models and empirical findings on teacher professionalization. A multi-cohort longitudinal study is conducted to assess relevant indicators of pre-service teachers’ professional development.