In its research work, the department investigates the professionalization of pedagogical staff in the school institution. In particular, we focus on university teacher education, but also on professional development and continuing education. The central question is to what extent the offer and use of selected learning opportunities can contribute to teachers and school administrators being able to cope with their professional tasks. The projects of the department can be divided into two main research areas:
The project Fortbildungsmonitoring NRW aims to develop and pilot an evidence- and standards-based evaluation instrument to determine the quality of further education for teachers in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The research project investigates which competencies the participants of the qualification program Lehrkräfte Plus develop and how significant the individual program components are for the development of competencies.
Best educational opportunities for socially disadvantaged students: This is the goal of the federal-state initiative Schule macht stark. Together with the Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN), the University of Potsdam is responsible for the content cluster professionalization.
In the project Werkstatt Schule leiten the same-named further education program for school principals in the federal state of Saarland is being evaluated in cooperation with the German School Academy.
The project examines the development of competencies of students who are studying "Primary School Teaching" at the Humboldt University of Berlin as career changers. The project is carried out in cooperation with the Bertelsmann Foundation and the Humboldt University of Berlin.
The CoMMIT project investigates the extent to which cooperation between teachers helps to promote the innovation and development capacity of schools. The investigation is carried out with support of the German School Academy at schools that won the German School Award and other comparative schools.
This project investigates the supply and use of digital media in the context of professional training for teachers in the federal states of Berlin, Brandenburg and Schleswig-Holstein. The project takes place in cooperation with the Leuphana University of Lüneburg and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
In this project we use a virtual classroom as part of a seminar to teach students skills in classroom management. In the seminar students can learn how to recognize and deal with classroom disorders through the use of virtual reality. The project is carried out in cooperation with the department "Complex Multimedia Application Architectures" at the University of Potsdam.