BUG 2017

The topic

The teaching profession is one of the professions through which we shape our society most strongly today and tomorrow. Hannah Arendt formulated this in her Bremen speech on the "Crisis of Education" (1958) as follows: "Anyone who does not want to take responsibility for the world (...) must not help to educate children". Who educates children and young people in schools during the entire phase of their childhood and adolescence that is critical for their development and thus shapes them in a sustainable way? How and with what goals is this done? What qualifications are required for this? Who has what expectations of schools, teachers, teacher training and the education system and on what basis? In view of far-reaching social and societal changes, these questions have become much more important in recent years. For schools and teachers as their central players, the question arises as to whether and how they should react to these changes. Currently, migration and digitalisation - two very different topics - are key challenges for schools and teacher training. In addition, the German PISA shock and the Hattie study, which exposed the teacher as a key factor for successful teaching, are intensifying the growing expectations placed on teachers and therefore on teacher training. Today, there seems to be a widespread consensus that teachers are not only highly qualified experts in their subject and professionally trained educators. At the same time, they are also assigned tasks such as language promoters, integration assistants and career counsellors. Whether and, if so, how these goals and tasks are (or should be) achieved, realised and mastered by (future) teachers is now more than ever a matter of importance to society as a whole. The question of what attention we devote to teacher education is no more and no less than the question of how, in Hannah Arendt's words, we fulfil our responsibility for the "life and becoming of the child as well as for the continuity of the world". Against this background, a fundamental critical reflection on this enormous responsibility that goes hand in hand with teacher education seems necessary.