How do trainee teachers develop during their preparatory service? How do they experience this period? What challenges do they and their trainers face? And how can they be positively supported to overcome barriers? These are the key questions we are investigating in this project.
The project “Evaluation of the Preparatory Service in North Rhine-Westphalia” is now in its third phase, analysing the effects of the 2011 reform of the teacher traineeship in North Rhine-Westphalia”
- Focus: Differential educational conditions and educational trajectories
- Department: Quality of Teaching and Learning in Educational Institutions
- Research area: Teaching and learning in schools
- Educational sectors: School, Further education
- Duration: 01/2023 – 12/2025
- Funding: Ministry for Schools and Education of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia
North-Rhine-Westphalia Breaks New Ground in Teacher Training
In the early 2000s, teacher training in North Rhine-Westphalia was put to the test. One reason for this was the changeover of university education to the Bachelor's/Master's system. This raised some very fundamental questions. First and foremost: how should education be organised in general?
To be better able to respond to the challenges of everyday school life, the teacher training should be practice-oriented and job-related. The state government therefore commissioned a board of experts to draw up recommendations for improving teacher training in North Rhine-Westphalia. A new teacher training law was finally passed in May 2009. An important innovation was the extension of the practical phases that prospective teachers must complete and the introduction of a practical semester in the Master of Education programme, which is now standard for many students. These changes are meant to ensure that future teachers are better prepared for the demands of their profession.
»Since 2009, the Master of Education teacher training programme has included a practice semester – an important innovation at the time, which students are now taking for granted.«
However, it is not only the degree programme that has been reviewed and reformed, but also the preparatory service – also known as the traineeship. In this phase, the focus is less placed on teaching basic knowledge and more on developing skills based on reflection. While the degree programme is designed to prepare students for practice, the traineeship is designed to give them the necessary confidence in dealing with pupils. In this way, trainee teachers learn in a concrete way what is important when teaching.
The new preparatory service for prospective teachers came into force on August 1, 2011. It has been cut from 24 to 18 months and has a new didactic training concept.
Scientific Support for In-Service Teacher Training: the BilWiss Research Programme
A lot has changed in teacher training in North Rhine-Westphalia since then. The new teacher training law states that the quality of teacher training should be continuously evaluated and further developed by the state government. It was therefore good that a research alliance consisting of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, the University of Münster and the University of Duisburg-Essen planned a major research project on in-service teacher training. The BilWiss project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, investigated the usefulness of educational science knowledge (BilWiss) at the start of a career. In addition to subject-specific and didactic knowledge in individual subject combinations, prospective teachers also acquire educational science knowledge during their studies. These connections will be analysed in one of the largest federal states, North Rhine-Westphalia.
The close cooperation over time and space led to the expansion of the original project plan and the creation of the first project phase led by Professor Mareike Kunter. Those responsible wanted to find out whether the shortening of the preparatory service from 24 to 18 months could be compensated for by improving the quality of the training elements. The aim of the scientific support was to enable well-trained teachers to enter the teaching profession who would be able to successfully meet the many challenges.
Caption: At the final conference of the BilWiss research project, the team discussed the results and their significance for teacher training with people from teacher training and educational research.
For the evaluation, the first cohort of teachers who underwent the new 18-month induction programme immediately after the reform was scientifically monitored and compared with the last cohort who were still completing the old induction programme and had been analysed as part of the BilWiss study. We found that the majority of the new learning opportunities had been successfully implemented shortly after the reform came into force, and that the shortening of the training period did not bring along a loss of quality.
As teachers are constantly faced with new challenges, the requirements for their training also evolve. And for us, after the research project is before the research project – the tried and tested collaboration should continue.