Tübingen School of Education (TüSE)

Work Area Research: TüSE Research

Concept of TüSE Research

As per its mission statement, the University of Tübingen aims at strengthening its international appeal through outstanding achievements. The Tübingen School of Education orients itself to this aspiration and has taken up the university’s guiding concepts in its mission statement: ‘Research – Relevance – Responsibility”. In the work area of Research, the Tübingen School of Education organizes and realizes any research that pertains to teacher education, school, and teaching, as well as interlinking the widely available expertise.

Using the research strength of Tübingen’s subject didactics and educational sciences (at the Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology, the Institute of Education, the Methods Center, the Leibniz Institute for Knowledge Media or the International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities), the Tübingen School of Education facilitates the systematic cooperation of subject didactic and educational research, as well as an interdisciplinary research culture in the teacher-training subjects and cooperating organizations.

The University of Tübingen has carried out lasting structural changes to realize these goals, such as the establishment of 18 new professorships for teacher education, of which 12 are in subject didactics. The BMBF-funded professorships in educational science are appointed with the denomination suffix 'in subject didactics'. They are required to cooperate systematically with subject didactics and thus support their development and research performance.

The Tübingen Program for the Promotion of Young Academics (TüNaPro) also reinforces subject didactical research by explicitly prioritizing the qualification of young talent in didactics.

TüSE Research stands for a broad spectrum of approaches in scientific theory, methodology, and research methodology, including empirical-quantitative, empirical-qualitative, theory-based, historical, and internationally comparative approaches.

Structure of TüSE Research

The structure of TüSE Research can be described by means of three research-related cooperation and funding types. Line 1 comprises all collaborations related to calls for proposals. Here the board and management of TüSE sound out relevant calls for proposals, and integrate and coordinate expertise in educational sciences, subjects and subject didactics, up to the final collective application.

Line 2 is made up of the so-called Special Interest Groups (SIGs). After almost two years of preparatory work, a collective conference (research profiles of teacher training, school and classroom research in Tübingen) of all actors from the fields of didactics, educational sciences, and sciences and humanities at the University of Tübingen, as well as on the recommendation of the Advisory Board, the School Board unanimously decided in July 2019 to establish SIGs.

A SIG is an association of researchers united by an explicit common research interest. The establishment of SIGs expresses the TüSE’s aspiration to integrate the diverse thematic, methodological, and methodical accesses of Tübingen research on teacher training, school and teaching, and at the same time to pool the expertise of researchers.

At the moment, colleagues from subject didactics, sciences and humanities, and educational sciences are collectively researching in seven SIGs:

Line 3 comprises all needs- and resources-related measures and activities. Thematic needs are identified through the board and management of the TüSE, research collaborations are initiated and, if resources are available, also supported. This is done, for instance, through internal calls for proposals with evaluation procedures.

Running Projects of TüSE Research

Within the framework of these lines and measures, TüSE Research is itself conducting several research projects, particularly in the context of the "Qualitätsoffensive Lehrerbildung":

Ethics proposals that are required in the context of research projects in teacher education, school and classroom research can be submitted to the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences.

Contact Person Research: 
 Dr. Nina Beck 
 nina.beckspam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de