Reducing fragmentation in university pre-service teacher education

Conditions and strategies

authored by: Erik Hanke, Stefanie Hehner, Angelika Bikner-Ahsbahs
Abstract: We report on findings from a design research project in higher education that aims to overcome pre-service teachers’ experiences of fragmentation in their educational programmes. We have developed an approach to reduce fragmentation in which we initiate and conduct boundary crossing between subject matter and subject matter didactics courses at university. Following this approach, the design principle boundary crossing by design(ing) for interlinking subject matter and subject matter didactics has been developed and implemented in two subjects in pre-service teacher education at university, one in mathematics and one in English language teaching. The linking between subject matter and subject matter didactics we strive for is twofold: On the one hand, it requires curricular and organisational dove-tailingof the courses involved (boundary crossing by design). On the other hand, it needs a study space where pre-service teachers are urged to try to interlink the courses’ contents in their thinking and acting (boundary crossing by designing). Following our design principle, a nested design approach is implemented in which pre-service teachers’ designs of teaching practice is in-terlocked with the design of courses at university level. This practical outcome is complemented by theoretical findings about the new phenomenon of linking course contents in teacher educa-tion at university and its conditions of success. We illustrate two kinds of findings with empirical examples: A conditional model for the intertwined realisation of the two types of linking, and interlinking strategies as heuristics for the pre-service teachers’ thinking and acting.
External Organisation(s): University of Bremen
Type: Article
Journal: EDeR - Educational Design Research
Publication date: 03.11.2021
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.15460/eder.5.2.1613 (Access: Open)
: Details in the research portal "Research@Leibniz University"

BibTeX

@article{94fb29350dc54c41a12277a4d34a72c4,
title = "Reducing fragmentation in university pre-service teacher education: Conditions and strategies",
abstract = "We report on findings from a design research project in higher education that aims to overcome pre-service teachers{\textquoteright} experiences of fragmentation in their educational programmes. We have developed an approach to reduce fragmentation in which we initiate and conduct boundary crossing between subject matter and subject matter didactics courses at university. Following this approach, the design principle boundary crossing by design(ing) for interlinking subject matter and subject matter didactics has been developed and implemented in two subjects in pre-service teacher education at university, one in mathematics and one in English language teaching. The linking between subject matter and subject matter didactics we strive for is twofold: On the one hand, it requires curricular and organisational dove-tailingof the courses involved (boundary crossing by design). On the other hand, it needs a study space where pre-service teachers are urged to try to interlink the courses{\textquoteright} contents in their thinking and acting (boundary crossing by designing). Following our design principle, a nested design approach is implemented in which pre-service teachers{\textquoteright} designs of teaching practice is in-terlocked with the design of courses at university level. This practical outcome is complemented by theoretical findings about the new phenomenon of linking course contents in teacher educa-tion at university and its conditions of success. We illustrate two kinds of findings with empirical examples: A conditional model for the intertwined realisation of the two types of linking, and interlinking strategies as heuristics for the pre-service teachers{\textquoteright} thinking and acting.",
author = "Erik Hanke and Stefanie Hehner and Angelika Bikner-Ahsbahs",
year = "2021",
month = nov,
day = "3",
doi = "10.15460/eder.5.2.1613",
language = "Deutsch",
journal = "EDeR - Educational Design Research",
publisher = "Hamburg University Press",
}