Coherence through Cultures of Remembrance? A Design-Based Research Project at the Intersection of Literary Studies, Subject Didactics and School Practice

Abstract

AbstractTeacher education programs often lack opportunities for future teachers to develop networked knowledge structures by integrating knowledge from different fields. This article presents a design based research project that aims to link different domains of professional knowledge and enhance transferability to school practice in the form of an integrated seminar for student teachers of Spanish as a foreign language. The course combines team-teaching units with individual and collaborative problem-based learning tasks to promote co-constructive knowledge integration. Initial evaluation results indicate significant effects in terms of coherence construction and perception among students, but also reveal challenges and limitations of the integrated format (e.g., an above-average workload). Furthermore, fostering course coherence draws attention to other components of the teacher education program. On the one hand, integrating domains requires transparency about the knowledge acquired in previous courses, on the other hand, the creation of meaningful tasks implies matching them to the realities of professional practice in school. As initial surveys have shown, the implied tasks and related fostering of coherence result in a potentially fruitful but also tense relationship with university studies.