Professionalization of Vocational Education and Training Staff
Pre-service teacher education is the major task of the higher education activities in the TVET Department. The main disciplines include vocational disciplines of automotive engineering, production engineering, mechanical engineering technology, textile technology and supply engineering.
In addition, research investigates requirements of training staff such as vocational trainers in industrial companies and craft. In order to professionalize them, the department develops concepts for the qualification of these heterogeneous target groups.
Within the department, training teachers is not only an important implementation task within the framework of subject didactic teaching, but also becomes a research object itself within the framework of various projects. This context entails the following questions, e.g. the practical references in teacher education:
- What demands in the teaching profession await students at vocational schools colleges?
- In what way are gainful employment and training conditions changing in the vocational fields of automotive engineering, production engineering, mechanical engineering, textile engineering and supply engineering?
- How can vocational field reference of each vocational specialization, e.g. automotive engineering the orientation of which is along how people are gainfully employed be established and improved in the course of training teachers?
Questions as to the quality of teacher training are continuously asked during the course of study:
- Along which guiding principles of professionalization should teacher education for vocational schools be oriented?
- How can curricula and courses be improved on an on-going basis while requirements in schools, gainful employment in the professional field and the demands placed on professionalization change?
The following is an attempt at answering the issue of finding more people willing to become a teacher:
- What measures can be taken to increase the number of teachers in industrial-technical fields that are subject to a shortage?
- What should an advisory service look like that would attempt to increase the number of students?
- How can students be prevented from dropping out by providing them with continuous support during their college years?