Strengthening the theory-practice link in teacher education

The internship semester as a cross-phase and cross-institutional forum for the joint redesign of a digital learning and teaching culture

Abstract

The project “Praxissemester an digital innovativen Schulen” (“Internship Semester at Digitally Innovative Schools”) aims to bring together different professionals from the fields of research, education and practice under the umbrella of a digital learning and teaching culture. The project is based on the demands and standards for prospective teachers in ‘The Digital Condition’ (Stalder, 2016) and focuses on the needs and wants of the participants in the two teacher education programs in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, which are situated at the universities of Kiel and Flensburg. The use of seminars has allowed the strengthening of the link between theory and practice as well as the enabling of learning opportunities for reflections of digital learning and teaching. These links, both individual and collaborative, could be developed, implemented and evaluated. In this article we describe the developed seminars, which focus on a cross-phase and cross-institutional cooperation, by referring to theoretical embedding and also structural conditions of the seminar design. Moreover, we present the first results of the evaluation research by describing individual beliefs and expectations of both groups of student teachers. These were assessed through a reflective instrument at the beginning of the semester. The empirical findings as well as the development of the seminars will be discussed against the background of the importance of reflective occasions and the associated development of professional competencies in teacher education.