SKILL: Passau pilot project on the further development of teacher education

SKILL, which stands for 'Strategien zur Kompetenzentwicklung: Innovative Lehr- und Beratungskonzepte in der Lehrerbildung' ('strategies for competency development: innovative teaching and advice concepts in teacher education'), is a joint cross-faculty project of the University of Passau, aimed at further developing teacher education in collaboration with the Teacher Education Centre (German). The focus of the project is on the establishment of a teaching laboratory to develop innovative teaching and learning concepts for the University's teacher education programmes.

SKILL is the University's answer to deficits in teacher education, as discussed under the keywords 'institutional segmentation', 'marginalisation of teacher education students' and 'curricular fragmentation'. The project will close the gaps between subject disciplines, subject didactics and educational sciences.

The integration of subject disciplines and subject didactics in teacher education will be improved ('de-fragmentation'), while the teacher education programmes will be brought to the fore ('de-marginalisation') and the advice services for teacher education students ameliorated. To achieve these aims, the project will leverage its teaching projects through the teaching laboratory, a profession-oriented advice service and co-operation with regional schools. To ensure that the structures, once established, lead to innovation, the project receives support from a specialised centre for quality development.

"The classroom of the future"

The teaching laboratory is located in a former seminar room in the Nikolakloster building, which has been re-equipped to meet modern teaching requirements at schools as well as in a higher education context. This 'classroom of the future', which boasts flexible furniture, a system of wall-mounted rails with moving presentation spaces and modern multimedia technology, can be used for a multitude of different application scenarios for university rooms and pilot projects with school pupils.

SKILL is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research; the funding term is from 2016 to 2019.

Principal Investigator(s) at the University	Prof. Dr. Jutta Mägdefrau (Zentrum für Lehrerbildung und Fachdidaktik (ZLF))
Project period	01.01.2016 - 30.06.2019
Website	http://www.skill.uni-passau.de
Source of funding	BMBF - Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung > BMBF - Bund-Länder-Programm BLP > BMBF - Bund-Länder-Programm BLP - Qualitätsoffensive Lehrerbildung (BLP QL)