Teacher Training for Inclusive Education in Germany: Status Quo and Curricular Implementation

Abstract

The transformation of the German education system because of the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (United Nations, 2006) has also reached the domain of teacher training. Professional competences and their development are brought into focus (e. g., Trautmann, 2017). Since 2013, all prospective teachers in Germany have to be qualified in the field of heterogeneity, inclusion and diagnostics, mainly in the educational science part of the teacher training programmes (KMK, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2013e, 2015). However, there is a great heterogeneity regarding the content and structures of this teacher training for inclusion in Germany. Despite the formal anchoring of inclusion and heterogeneity in teacher training in Germany, an overview of the current status of the curricular implementation of inclusion-oriented teacher training is missing. The aim of this study is to fill this gap and, to do so, investigates in a first step the educational science parts of the curricula. Therefore, the study and examination regulations of all general education teacher training programmes (primary, secondary I and II) at German universities were analyzed by means of qualitative content analysis. The results show differences in the extent of the curricula regarding heterogeneity and inclusion between the states and universities on the one hand and the various study programmes on the other hand.

Citation

Liebner, S. and Schmaltz, C. (2021), "Teacher Training for Inclusive Education in Germany: Status Quo and Curricular Implementation", Goldan, J., Lambrecht, J. and Loreman, T. (Ed.) Resourcing Inclusive Education (International Perspectives on Inclusive Education, Vol. 15), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 133-145. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-363620210000015011