Kompetenzforschung in der Lehrer/innenbildung (DSP KLB)

Overview

Motivation:  
Our doctorate school PLUS supports and enforces the development of a new generation of educational researchers in Austria who dedicate themselves to a very important issue of school quality, namely the competences of (beginning) teachers. The doctorate school PLUS programme considerably contributes to the further development of the Austrian educational system.      
The selection of the competences to be explored, their description and measurement as well as assumptions about their factual and required development are based on the new curriculum for teacher education studies for teaching at all types of secondary schools in Austria. This curriculum is first offered in cooperation with nine other universities and university colleges in autumn 2016/17.  

Goals:  
The basic issue aims at the theoretical conceptualization and empirical description and measurement of selected competences of teacher students. The following aspects must be combined to obtain a profound understanding on the relationship between students´ starting conditions and necessary learning environments: results of the newly compulsory entrance examination which is yet to be improved; other collected data on personal prerequisites of teacher students at the beginning; domain specific competences; learning opportunities during their studies. We try to reconsider potential associations.  
This doctorate school PLUS programme is on the one hand a great databased opportunity accompanying the implementation of the curriculum from the perspective of students´ competences and on the other hand the results can be used to foster the development of students´ competences and the quality of teaching in teacher education.  

Approach:  
Our doctorate school PLUS is established in cooperation with the following subject areas and their departments at the University of Salzburg: psychology, German studies, English and American Studies, Romance studies, history, biology, physics, mathematics and statistics, theology and sports.  
Linking an exceptional team with a basic present and future issue of educational sciences is a unique synergy. So the following will come true:

• Realised interdisciplinarity between content knowledge studies, content pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical knowledge studies
• Close research collaboration with universities in Switzerland and Germany  
• A global approach linking research, teaching and the development of the teacher profession embedded in teacher education studies.