Information on the courses

The project Professionelles Lehrerhandeln zur Förderung fachlichen Lernens (ProfaLe) is designed to strengthen teacher education in Hamburg. It aims to facilitate skill development in teachers in training through innovative courses. In this way it also realizes the wishes and needs that students have expressed within the scope of degree program evaluations.

The course offers developed as part of this project expand the existing offer for teacher training students at Universität Hamburg; they reflect multiple perspectives, i.e. interlinking school education, special education, subject-specific didactic, and/or subject viewpoints.

The courses developed in Action Area 1 (Cooperation Between Subjects and Subject-Specific Didactics) aim to link subject and subject-specific didactic learning content. They are thus ideal preparation for flexible and competent application of specialist knowledge to actual teaching practice in the classroom.

The courses in Action Area 2 (Linguistic-Cultural Heterogeneity) and Action Area 3 (Inclusion) are oriented to social demands that teacher training students will face in their future teaching career. The courses developed in the action areas teach students effective procedures and methods for addressing a heterogeneous student body and strengthen their skills in this arena.

Action Area 4 (Cross-Phase Cooperation) focuses on innovative concepts to support students during the Kernpraktikum, the second educational internship. The aim is in particular to intensify cooperation between mentors, students, and lecturers in the subject-specific didactic complementary seminars. This includes, for example, involvement of mentors in the individual seminar classes and sharing of expert knowledge as equal partners.

The courses in the four action areas are usually marked as “ProfaLe” in STiNE. Students can register for the courses through STiNE. The performance requirements for these courses and amount of work required in them are comparable with other seminars.

ProfaLe is designed as a research and development project. This means that we seek to actively involve students in critical-constructive examination of the various topics and in ongoing development of the courses we offer. We therefore conduct surveys among participants regarding their experience in the seminars, the contents of the classes, and their learning success.  These evaluations are conducted within the scope of the courses.