Objectives and design
Now more than ever, vocational teacher education students bear a responsibility to help young people leave vocational education as cosmopolitan and reflective citizens who actively play a part in shaping our society and the globalised labour market. The opportunities offered by the MOVE IT! Project allow our vocational teacher education students to gain unique international and intercultural experiences which will shape them for many years to come and which they can share with their pupils.Christian Schröder, Vice President for Education, Teacher Training, and Continuing Education, TU Berlin
Project starting point
Vocational teacher education faces challenges that arise both from the structure of teacher training and also the unique characteristics of this group of students. On the one hand, there is a limited number of suitable partner institutions outside Germany that train teachers for vocational systems similar to that in Germany. Even school-based placements at German schools abroad are challenging, as, while such placements are common in other subjects, these schools rarely offer vocational subjects.
Different lived realities
From another perspective, many students training for vocational education are unlike ‘traditional’ students and bring different contexts to their studies. For example, they are often older and have children or caring responsibilities, and many come from backgrounds where no or few members of their family have studied in higher education. In addition to this, many students may have little experience living or studying outside Germany. This not only demands that the design of the whole teacher education programme is sensitive to diversity (cf. Fegter/Kost/Oelrichs), and also imposes particular demands on internationalisation in the programme.
I always want to be able to balance my future career teaching in vocational education and my lifelong learning with my family. Thanks to encountering all kinds of people through programmes such as MOTIVATE! which are international, digital, and flexible in terms of time or offered in the evening, I have become more open, sensitive and aware in how I treat others. The programme also enables me to internalise and share diverse thinking and acting.Sophie, teacher education student in the vocational metal technology department, TU Berlin
Tailored solutions
Through the MOVE IT! project, we take these factors as our starting point in order to develop tailored provision. Our aim is to go beyond ‘opening up’ services already provided by other subjects, and to help internationalise our study programmes sustainably. The partly digital MOTIVATE! tandem programme has proved promising in this area following two successful test cycles.
The two-semester programme connects teacher education students at TU Berlin with teacher education students at our partner institutions. MOTIVATE! facilitates far-reaching international experience and is tightly focused on the needs of vocational education trainee teachers. It offers a high degree of flexibility, intensive discussions, individual support and a fixed reference group, while at the same time allowing plenty of time and space for students to contribute and expand their own interests and priorities.
Conclusions and outlook
Our experiences from this programme show that digital services hold great potential for internationalising vocational teacher education. In addition to this, they enrich teacher education in a way that helps raise the quality and attractiveness of teacher education as a whole.
