How future teachers best learn to teach
2023-08-22 Lüneburg. The acquisition of basic competencies plays a central role in the training of teachers. So far, however, there are no systematic, empirically based studies on how this learning process should best look. Prof. Dr. Marc Kleinknecht from Leuphana University Lüneburg and Prof. Dr. Matthias Nückles from the University of Freiburg want to change that.
The researchers are dealing with interdisciplinary, proven effective and trainable activities of teaching, so-called core practices. To this end, they are investigating the optimal sequence and design of training phases and testing them in elaborate experimental studies.
In the ACTion project, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the two professors, together with their research assistants Anna Holstein (Leuphana University of Lüneburg) and Hadmut Hipp (University of Freiburg), are using the example of the core practice "Instructing students in the self-regulated comprehension of non-fiction texts" to investigate how future teachers can best be qualified to teach appropriate reading strategies.
Their investigation is directed at well-known approaches to instruction and acquisition of competencies, which originate from teacher research influenced by educational science and cognitive psychology of teaching-learning research. Such approaches have not yet been systematically investigated in teacher research, for example with regard to learning effects or action competence.
As a very practical result of their work, the researchers want to present empirically verified recommendations on how teaching training should be designed in the education of prospective teachers so that it can be successfully applied in the classroom. For this purpose, they will determine in their experiments which phases and forms of teaching and learning can optimally promote the knowledge, professional perception and action competence of prospective teachers.
The research team will present their initial findings at the end of August at a conference of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI) in Thessaloniki as part of a symposium on core practices.