EMLT Bulletin 23 (January) - EN

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J A N U A R Y, 2 0 1 7

23

U N S IV D C EP H ER O F AR OO SIT ED B TM L Y U A N U S U C IN EN T R A EM TI ES T BE ON S R , G

TH E

TH E

THE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL AT THE DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS EDUCATION , NUREMBERG What is the "University School"?

The department of business education and human resource development has developed a new and most innovative way of teaching master students the necessary skills for becoming good teachers.

In the “Nuremberg University School Model”, the department of business education and five vocational schools in the metropol region of Nuremberg form a network, which guarantees every of 125 master students of business education an in-depth, hands-on insight and participation in every-day school life, teaching and class-room work.

How does it work?

Students join the university school in the beginning of their master studies.

There are two main ingredients, which make the university school an innovative component of “teaching future teachers”.

Firstly, there is a deep dive into “every-day teacher life”: In groups, for two semesters they spend a full workday per week in a vocational school. A group of 25 professional teachers acts as mentors, supporting students shadowteaching, analyzing lessons and preparing their own lessons and finally teaching their own lessons. Students also get actively involved by their mentors in class work and administrative activities at school.

Secondly, there is the strong of

connection experience and reflection against

the

background of theory:

The

focus

of university school is on enquiry-based learning.

Therefore,

students work on smallsized,

research

projects

with an emphasis on teaching, didactics, teaching methods and pedagogical questions. Sharing their experiences from schools, presentations and course work at university, mentored by university teachers and mentors from vocational school, give the master students plenty of opportunities to reflect on their teaching results, their performance in class, their idea of developing their professional “teacher personality” and more.

What is the idea behind it?

The idea of university school at the department of business education in Nuremberg is to enable students to develop their own professional way of teaching, while still at university. The strong emphasis on experimenting with different teaching methods, seeing professional teachers in class and even work with them is supposed to give students confidence in their own abilities to teach, enable them to make a mature decision on if teaching is the right profession for them, and to develop a good sense for “meaningful teaching”.

Working in small but stable groups (the groups are formed right at the starting-point of semester one and students stay in their group until the end of semester two) allows supportive and individual mentoring.

Students get a step-by-step tuition and assignments which gives them the ability to build up their own “tool box” with teaching methods and options.

Students spend around 600 hours working within the university school, preparing classes, assignments, attending seminars or mentoring meetings and receive 20 ECTS for it. In their second master semester, the course “university school” is complemented by the module “empirical research”. Here students get the necessary skills to do own research within their classroom work, to evaluate outcomes of teaching methods and to reflect themselves.

Peer-review and Peer-reflection are additional components of the “enquiry-based learning” approach of the university school at the department of business education in Nuremberg.

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