“Teaching as a Side Job?” Reflection and Quality Development Regarding Teacher Candidates’ Part-Time School Employment While in School

Against the backdrop of the ongoing teacher shortage and the increasing number of students working as substitute teachers (SWK 2023), the Empirical School Research Unit with a focus on Instructional Development (Prof. Matthias Martens, Dr. Bernadette Bernasconi) has developed a seminar concept to support and train this group of students. During a workshop on November 6, 2024, with a group of 20 participants (students, school administrators, seminar leaders from the Center for Practical Teacher Training (ZfsL), and job coaches), previous experiences and needs related to student teachers’ substitute teaching were gathered, and criteria for support were developed based on this input.

The seminar concept will be tested and evaluated in the summer semester of 2025 and the winter semester of 2025/2026 in two different modules of the educational studies program (the Teaching Module and the Innovation & Profession Module). The goal is to facilitate an exchange of experiences among students, to help them reflect on their role as teachers, and to further develop their professional competencies. Using case studies from their own school practice, students are guided to take a step back from their behavior and selected situations, analyze them, and identify underlying problems and questions. Through collective discussion, new perspectives are opened up and practice-oriented strategies are developed. The seminar is designed to be flexible and needs-based, allowing individual topics and challenges to be brought up and integrated into the seminar plan.

Project “Part-time Teaching Job?”: https://www.hf.uni-koeln.de/43144

Contact:

Prof. Matthias Martens: m.martens@uni-koeln.de

Dr. Bernadette Bernasconi: bernadette.bernasconi@uni-koeln.de