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Tertium Comparationis, Vol. 6 (2000), No. 2

Editor: Günter Brinkmann

Contents

Günter Brinkmann

Lehrerbildung in England und Wales

The author supports the thesis that today's teacher training programs have to take account of the new tendencies in the field of university education (a higher degree of autonomy, market-orientation, competition, evaluation and practical orientation). However, this should not be done as radically as in England and Wales, where the traditional basic structure of teacher training is in danger of being lost along the way. It is certainly right to reduce the much lamented overload of theory in university studies in favour of training in practice. But with 80% of practically orientated training a fundamental and systematical study of theory becomes impossible. This, as well as the school-like structure of university study in other countries, should not be adopted. Other aspects of the reforms in teacher training like the new cooperation associations between universities and training schools should be considered carefully by other countries.

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John J. Peters

Lehrerausbildung in den Niederlanden im Rahmen einer sich wandelnden Schullandschaft

Teacher education in the Netherlands in the context of changes in school and society. One of the main issues in higher education is quality assurance especially in teacher education. The most important developments in school and society which have influenced the quality and position of teacher education are briefly discussed. In this article four "solutions" for improving the quality are mentioned. These are: more coherence in the three different kinds of teacher education systems, improvement of the quality of the teaching profession, suggestions for solving the shortage of (student) teachers, and a new curriculum in which learning and working are integrated.

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Klaus-Dieter Mende

Sollte das der große Wurf gewesen sein?
Anmerkungen zur Lehrerbildung in Schweden

In October 2000 a political decision to reform teacher education in Sweden has been taken by the national parliament. In its final part, this article describes the main ideas of the new teacher education. The reform is regarded to be the last step within the current changes in Swedish education, started in the beginning of the 1990s. School has been decentralised, and curricula have been changed from content orientation to goal and result orientation. Thus the new teacher education is dedicated to match the new situation in school and adult education. The core structural elements lead to a more common education, more emphasise is given to professionalism. All teacher students will have to study in three different areas: The "General Education" (60 weeks of studies) for the first time in teacher education in Sweden will force all teacher students into common studies, hopefully leading to overall teachers' competencies. The "Studies in Subject Areas" will allow not only to study traditional school subjects but also to study more complex content or problem areas regarded to be important in school. The "Studies with Specialisation" will enable future teachers to deepen or to broaden their studies according to individual preferences. The whole system will offer a great flexibility in choice, and students as well as teachers in school are expected to be able to lay ground for a continuous upgrading of knowledge and competencies after having passed this education. The author also presents some brief description of teacher education in Sweden since it started in the 1840s. He stresses that teacher education is regarded to be changed permanently, due to the changing social and pedagogical challenges for teachers in school. The article gives some evidence of the development in educating teachers and describes more detailed how teacher education has been running during the last decade. It becomes obvious that the actual teacher education is differentiated into very many programmes, isolated from each other, leading to a professional competence in a very limited part of the educational system. But several investigations doubt whether this works successfully. Therefore a broad consensus inside the country could be activated to push forward the preparations for a new teacher education. Nevertheless the controversial debate on the new rules for teacher education has started, although they are not yet in force.

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Gerald Grimm

Universitäre Lehrerbildung in Österreich - Zur Genese des pädagogischen Begleitstudiums für Lehrer an höheren Schulen von 1848 bis zur Gegenwart

The paper deals with the development of the pedagogical training of teachers at higher secondary schools in Austria. It covers the period from the early beginnings of academic training at Austrian universities, in the middle of the 19th century, to the present. For more than a century, the pedagogical and didactic training of teachers had simply been a by-product of the science and arts faculties. During that time, any practical training in schools became only available for teachers after they had graduated from university, in their so-called "Probejahr", a one-year "in-house" practice. However, in 1977, a fundamental reform of academic teacher training courses at Austrian universities took place. A special pedagogical programme (including general principles of pedagogy, methodology, and an in-house practice at schools) was, for the first time, integrated into the academic teacher training courses and explicitly included in the respective Study Act. The old "Probejahr", or trial year, was replaced by the new "Unterrichtspraktikum", or teaching-practice year, in 1988. That laid the foundation for a modern academic teacher training at Austrian universities, which currently combines the practice and principle of teaching in the best possible way.

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Panos Xochellis

Die Lehreraus-, -fort- und -weiterbildung in Griechenland

This article aims to present from a critical point of view the initial and in-service training as well as the further training of teachers in Greece. Special emphasis is given in the in-service training, because, during the decade of '90 important evolution was remarked in this field and also because of the writers relative experiences and researches. The conclusion to which the article comes to is that school-based training is evaluated in many ways, by the teachers and school unions, as an innovative and accepted form of in-service training. Of course the questions that still remain to be examined are whether this school-based training proves to be effective on education, whether it is established in Greek education and whether it survives economically when the funding by the European Union is terminated.

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Maria Teresa Moscato

La formazione degli insegnanti per la futura Europa interculturale

The author analyses the development of the teaching profession in a European tradition, examining two ideal types that are connected in various ways: the teacher as an "intellectual" who is loyal to the national tradition and the teacher as a "representative of a future vision". The freedom of teaching and the function of a "people's educator" are closely connected to a perspective that also allows the teacher to be a "promoter of an opportunity" and to engage in ethnic-political questions that are emancipatory in nature. The development of schooling itself, with the increase in the numbers of teachers and the progressive bureaucratization of the teaching profession seems to imply serious problems as a new European perspective tries to combine and to guarantee the foundations of the training of future teachers. The inseparable interdependence of the development of schooling and the fundamental idea of citizenship that constitutes the spirit of Western culture requires a new philosophy of education within teacher-training programs that goes beyond the control of parameters and training standards. In this newly founded philosophy it will be possible to combine the (still problematic) idea of a multiculture with tenable aims of education for future generations. In this sense the article contains directions for pedagogical work instead of hypothetical solutions only.

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