Higher Education as a Range of Educational Activities for Student Teachers

Summary Taking German experience as her point of departure, the author pleads for a practice-based reform of secondary teacher education in universities by counter-balancing the traditional overaccentuation of theory and abstract cognitive learning. A broader concept of practice and the suggestion of a 'partial isomorphism' of universities and schools lead to the definition of higher education courses as practice and as fields of educational activities. In training seminars, student teachers have particular opportunities of profession-oriented experiences and insights. If they learn, from the very beginning of their studies, to interpret the seminar sessions as learning situations and to organise them deliberately in cooperation with the seminar leaders, they can build the first elements of professional competence. The article reports how this conception of teacher education as field of, and preparation for, practice has been realised in an introductory seminar for freshmen at the Ruhruniversitat Bochum.