20 years of ZLSB - Anniversary podcast with former and current director in conversation

00:00
Intro Juliane Sichler

Hello, and welcome to the ZLSB's anniversary podcast. My name is Juliane Sichler and I am currently the Manager of the Center. The former directors and the current director will now take you on a 20- year journey through time at the Center for Teacher Education, School and Vocational Education Research. And now I hope you enjoy listening.

00:26
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

Ladies and gentlemen in the orbit of the Center for Teacher Education and Educational Research here at TU Dresden. We would like to take this opportunity to take stock of the past, present and future of the ZLSB here at the Technische Universität Dresden. The ZLSB is one of the largest Centers for Teacher Education in the Federal Republic of Germany. We now have almost 70 employees in various contexts and are responsible for the design and coordination of Teacher Education here at TU Dresden in conjunction with the faculties and, of course, the Rectorate, and today we are taking the opportunity of the ZLSB's 20th anniversary to talk to three key players, or rather two key players who co-founded the Center. Steffen Friedrich and Wolfgang Melzer, who were the first Managing Directors of the Center. And yours truly as Managing Director, Axel Gehrmann, who has been Managing Director since 2012, is trying to moderate a little bit of this podcast.

Perhaps first to the actors. Steffen Friedrich was a professor of computer science didactics here at TU Dresden, having worked here for many years before that, and then became a professor here after the political change. Wolfgang Melzer became Professor of School Pedagogy after the fall of communism, with the integration of Teacher Education at TU Dresden and the re-establishment of the TU in 1993: School Research here until 2013. Steffen Friedrich made a very intensive preparatory contribution to the founding of the Center over many years, then served as Managing Director for a year from 2005 to 2006 and then Wolfgang Melzer from 2006 to 2012. So today we are not just looking back on 20 years of the ZLSB up to 2005, but actually almost thirty years, because Steffen Friedrich and Wolfgang Melzer have been working together for almost 10 years in preparation for the Center. It's great that you're here.

We have known each other for a long time and are very close on a personal level. I always take advice from colleagues and we are always in dialogue. But maybe we'll start with a warm-up. Where did the ZLSB actually stand, Steffen, when you started in the 90s and then in 2002, 2003? How did the ideas for the Center come about in the first place?

03:31
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

You actually have to start with the history of Teacher Education at this TU. With the integration of the University of Teacher Education, Teacher Education was distributed among the faculties and there was relatively quickly a joint Teacher Education Commission, which was subordinate to the Vice-Rector for Education and tried to coordinate, organise and link the faculties, as far as this was possible between the faculties, which were all under construction. And the idea came relatively quickly and it was felt that this was not possible with just the Vice-Rector, that more power was needed. We also realised that some students in the faculties, where there were not so many Teacher Education students, were left alone and had no voice. That was the basis for us to think about how we could improve the whole thing. How could we become more powerful in the university? Because even back then, I think we had around 4,000 student teachers. It was around 10 % of the students.

04:50
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

On the one hand, there was the tradition of vocational education, you have to bear that in mind. And everything else were new degree programmes. And the whole field was in flux. And there was an intermediate step, that was the founding board, to which Steffen Friedrich and my colleague Sandfuchs and I belonged. Three professors, appointed by the rector. And we were tasked with founding the Center between 2004 and 2006. And a great deal happened during this time. Compared to today's conditions, it was tabula rasa. There was actually nothing there. There was no building, there was no management, there was no secretary. But what I always think when we are in discussions with Axel Gehrmann, with today's conditions, every time has its prerequisites. Back then, we had a lot to do with conflicts. We had to deal with the build-up, but I don't envy the current Managing Director either, who now has to maintain this level after a consolidation and build-up phase. Especially when it comes to research. That was the intention right from the start, as reflected in the name. The mission of the founding board was to establish a Center for Teacher Education (ZfL). On the tenth anniversary, I mapped out the path from the ZfL to the ZLSB. So it is important that the vocational disciplines, vocational education, were integrated in this way through painstaking negotiations. And the second was research, because research...

06:26
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

...reputation within the university. But let's stay a little longer in the founding perspective. Steffen, you were reminiscing about the 1990s and it's been a long time since then, but can you take us back a little to this transitional period of the 1990s, the integration of the PH and then the reorganisation of TU Dresden? How conflict-ridden was this integration of Teacher Education and how necessary did it actually lead to such a Center perspective? Was this also an attempt at integration?

07:02
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

Yes, there are two sides to this. On the one hand, the question of integrating the University of Education into TU Dresden has been a very difficult path with many shoals. And many colleagues, including good colleagues, have fallen by the wayside. You have to recognise that today. Depending on the specialised faculties, certain areas have been able to assert themselves. Where there was no specialised Teacher Education at the TU, more were able to assert themselves than elsewhere. So you actually have to look at that in retrospect. But those who transferred from the Teacher Education college to the university were very actively and massively committed to Teacher Education. That's the way it is. And they were always the supporters and fighters at the forefront when it came to Teacher Education.

And, Wolfgang, about your comment:

It was not actually commissioned in 2004, but the joint commission on Teacher Education published its first major document in the 2000s and 2001, in which the structure of this Center is characterised as an academic institution and, above all, as a central institution outside the faculties. And I think that was a very important decision in the aftermath, but one that provoked a lot of headwind from the faculties.

08:35
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

I was also involved in the commission and the whole thing didn't happen in a vacuum. And the people who came from somewhere else, you've outlined your tradition here from the PH, of course they also had their experience. For example, I was at a reform university in Bielefeld, there was a laboratory school on campus, so theory and practice played a big role. There were committees, a huge Center for Teacher Education anyway. Then there was a Teacher Education conference parallel to the senate. And the Senate couldn't decide all things relating to Teacher Education on its own. For example, the Senate could not abolish a teaching position. Of course, these are influences that have now also shaped me and I haven't actually found anything here in this respect. That's why I said tabula rasa. That's why I was happy to work on this commission and contribute my ideas. And the KMK has been thinking about making such Centers compulsory.

And the TU had a lot of catching up to do in this respect. We were glad that a far-sighted rectorate under Rector Kokenge with Chancellor Post, to whom we also owe a lot at that time, came to this decision. And it was also a time of scarce resources and job cuts. And it wasn't just the idea of establishing a Center now to upgrade Teacher Education, as it literally says, but a second subordinate clause of the resolution at the time was what would benefit the efforts to maintain primary and secondary school Teacher Education at TU Dresden. There was also a strategic goal associated with this, namely to preserve the Teacher Education Center in Dresden, which was in danger. So there was to be a concentration of Leipzig, and Teacher Education in Chemnitz was discontinued, everything has since been revitalised. And the figures that the commission had, that we had, were presented to the politicians.

10:57
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

We go back a little further in time. Now we've started with the 1990s, where two educational traditions come together a little, so to speak, with different institutional experiences. And at the end of these 90s, in the exuberance of perhaps even oversizing the East German universities, there is a situation of cutbacks. And that's where you have to show yourself and that's probably where Teacher Education has to show itself. And perhaps the papers, the 1999 Terhart paper on professionalisation and Teacher Education, and then the standards for Teacher Education, were important external control elements. Because I would now like to come back to this founding situation insofar as you said that it was full of conflict. Could you describe that a little more clearly? Who is always the one or who are the ones?

Because you can say that there was the Terhart Commission, there were also interests in the state parliament to organise things, there was also an international move towards standards. We have had the discussion about the Pisa shock. So actually these are all signals that the university should pay attention to Teacher Education. But somehow there always seems to be a catch.

12:24
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

Yes, but you forget negative things and over time you only ever think about the positive things afterwards. But it's completely logical that with scarce resources, as Wolfgang Melzer just described, the faculties were naturally worried that staff would be taken away from them, that jobs would be taken away from them, that money would be taken away from them in order to centralise Teacher Education. That was the sticking point. And the faculties with a lot of student teachers were even more consistent and more over the top than those where it played less of a role. That was actually the course of events. And the two guys (Melzer and Sandfuchs) had it so that they said, watch out, so that it doesn't sound like Educational Science is now founding a Center and you'll be the first managing director. Then it's not someone from educational science. That makes a completely different impression at the university. And that's what happened.

12:57
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

This was an important step. Unlike the University of Leipzig, the Center was to be founded as a central academic institution. And what conflicts were there and between whom? Firstly, between the two ministries. The subsequent cooperation between the two ministries was not planned, not in essence. There were conflicts with the university management, e.g. certain achievements of the Center that we put forward. So a joint examination office, I don't know how I should react to what the Vice-Rector told me. Or, for example, a joint internship office, examination office, harmonised study structures and other things.

14:20
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

Time slots for courses were also a recurring issue.

14:24
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

But the lack of cooperation between the ministries was also a huge deficit at the time.

14:34
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

Perhaps there was also the fact that the ministries were naturally also keen to achieve this, and it all overlapped. You have to realise that it was the Bachelor's/Master's change, especially at that time. It was the concentration, the desire of the ministries to concentrate Teacher Education in Leipzig and then there were the uncertainties within the university. It was a very complex process and staying on track was certainly not always easy for the university management. But for those who wanted something new, it was also associated with new challenges every day.

15:14
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

I think the Bachelor's/Master's conversion was a stroke of luck for educational science as a young discipline. This constraint, i.e. maths, computer science and biology with a proven subject system, had no problem formulating the corresponding modules. But in the educational sciences, it required a process of understanding.

15:41
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

A canon too.

15:42
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

And a canon. But this reform has perhaps also achieved advantages.

15:50
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

I just wanted to say that it wasn't just the founding of this Center, but that it was overlaid by the process of changing the study structure in line with the Bologna Process. And it was not only discussed there, but also the module descriptions and so on. And it's no coincidence that the first paper we produced for the foundation of the Center contains three examples of module descriptions in the appendix.

16:19
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

Well, I'll go further. We're in the 1990s, we come to this moment around the year 2000: PISA shock, modularisation, the discussion, the relocation of Teacher Education to Leipzig, the closure of Chemnitz. These are all things that you remember, that are actually history for me, which we then had to feed back again and again from 2012 or in the decade. And you have described, actually, I often stick to this terminology (Wolfgang is from Bielefeld), Reinhard Koselleck, one of the leading historians, who always spoke of simultaneity of non-simultaneity or non-simultaneity at the same time. That is what is actually meant. There are overlapping things happening that have already progressed in other locations, but not yet at your own location. There is a certain situation, isn't there? So that's something, I think, where you probably take advantage of such an opportunity.

And if I remember Helmut Fend, one of the leading educational researchers, he once spoke historically of the saddle period. So there are saddle times when something changes. And this may have been such a saddle time situation on a small scale, that in 2005 something is being reorganised. It wasn't the first Center to be founded, but many were founded over the course of time, so that today we basically have over 60 in Germany.

Let's move on to your actual work to round off this review a little. What was particularly challenging and important to you in your work? Steffen, when you started out, what motivated you and were you able to motivate people? What drove you?

18:16
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

It was actually important to me that Teacher Education is valued at the Technical University, that it is well received. And the second was perhaps that students on Teacher Education programmes also feel comfortable at this university and are not the fifth wheel on the wagon. And the third, because we had a lot to do with teachers on the part-time degree programme in computer science, that TU Dresden is also recognised in schools, that Teacher Education at the university is also valued in schools. Those were the things that drove me, and always in different ways. And you always have people who give you an idea or tell you about a negative experience, which then spurs you on again.

19:07
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

But if we were to speak in positive terms, as you started to do earlier, then this is the beginning of cross-phase collaboration.

19:15
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

Naturally.

19:17
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

So it was important to get all the players on board here within the TU, i.e. the vocational disciplines, vocational education, the specialised didactics, which were scattered. Some subjects didn't have any specialised didactics or subject-specific sciences. In this respect, a specialised academic was elected to the board, a historian at the time. At the time, the Academic Council had an important function because it provided feedback across faculties.

One question was about the management function. What can you achieve as Managing Director, with a Board of Directors, perhaps even with an office that wasn't particularly well staffed, so to speak? What can you achieve without the grassroots? And it was both, in both directions. And of course there were many coincidences. And one great coincidence was the later minister, who was a seconded teacher at the ZLSB. And perhaps I can put it in the form of an anecdote.

I met Eva-Maria Stange at the GEW conference in Erfurt. We had a research assignment and we presented the results of this research on violence in schools. And in the subsequent conversation she said that she would not be re-elected, she would not run again. So I asked her what her plans were for afterwards. She said, I don't know, I'm going to see the Secretary of State next week, he probably won't give me a headship. And then I jokingly said, why don't you ask to be seconded to the Center for Teacher Education? I didn't mean it seriously and I didn't think it could be realistic. Ms Stange was seconded shortly afterwards and worked at the Center for Teacher Education for a year, supporting our work in the faculties and contributing to the concepts.

21:38
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

I would like to continue the story. As a result, I was appointed Head of Human Resources at the Ministry of Culture, as Managing Director. And he said to me, let's see how we can best do this. And then the secondment was perfect. And as a result, we had a lot of support, especially when it came to discussions with the faculties. So that helped us an incredible amount. The story ended with Eva-Maria Stange, who I knew from the University of Education, inviting me for coffee at the Zwinger and saying that I would be a minister from tomorrow.

22:18
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

We knew that a little earlier. And what was interesting was that, as a small Center for Teacher Education, we tried to get appointments at the rectorate. And we endeavoured and endeavoured and endeavoured and then maybe we got an appointment. And then it was finalised that Eva-Maria would become a minister. And Rector Kokenge asked our secretariat if Mrs Stange had time for an appointment in the Rectorate. That's how things changed and I have to say that there was a qualitative upswing in the cooperation between the ministries, in the cooperation between both ministries and the universities. And it was a fruitful time. And all the things that had to be included in the law were forged at that time. We owe a lot to this constellation.

23:19
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

The Center only came into being well after 2005, when a half-sentence was actually added to the Saxon Higher Education Act. We'll come to that later, as it actually is today. But that is the origin. Basically, the origin is not only that relations between the ministries have perhaps become more favourable, but also that the relationship across the Elbe, as we say, has simply become easier, so that there was also more tailwind from there than was perhaps ever the case. So, I think that's still the case today, that a connection has developed. And it certainly has an initial personal background.

23:59
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

But it's not just atmospheric or on the surface; as a result, target agreements were made between the two ministries and the universities, and they were binding. And it was also about teacher shortages, numbers, problems and so on. So Teacher Education experienced an enormous boost at the time as a result of this joint commission.

24:27
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

That's the next point, the personal perspective, that people get involved and are then given new tasks. At the same time, something new is being institutionalised. This joint commission already existed before, but it has taken on a new meaning. Today it would be the State Commission for Teacher Education (STAKO), as it has been called for several years now. It has become even more important over the years.

I would like to stay in the chronology. On the one hand, you have shown this positive effect. Someone comes, we have a delegation. Incidentally, this is the origin of the secondment system in Saxony, which is unique in the Federal Republic of Germany. We now have 17 seconded teachers, Leipzig has over 20.

The secondment system is an attempt to dovetail theory and practice more closely, to bring teachers back into the university, to give them a doctorate, to further academise them and then to give them new perspectives in schools. In other words, it is unique in Germany. Nonetheless, this relationship level has also been quite difficult, because now I'm starting to remember things. We came to the period between 2005 and 2010, when the discussion about the teacher shortage began. There were the first papers. Steffen has picked out a few things for us again. Can you take us back to what you did to draw attention to the fact that Teacher Education actually needs more appreciation and more training capacity and why this was not actually included?

26:08
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

I can't answer the last one. Absolutely not. We actually had a very intensive battle to maintain Teacher Education at TU Dresden in the primary and secondary school sector and did not want to give up this location. We used studies from the Teacher Education Subgroup Commission and there were also figures on the prospects for Teacher Education. And I can remember that, I think in 2005, 2006, there was a hearing in the state parliament about the decision on how to proceed with Teacher Education. Various guests were invited. Interestingly, there were five speakers from Leipzig and one from Dresden, there were supposed to be two, the vice rector had cancelled shortly beforehand. And I presented these figures at the hearing. And the figures were roughly that there was a good staffing level in the years 2001 to 2005. We also had a positive teacher staffing level until 2010.

27:21
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

But in this study, it was already clear that a deficit in the teaching profession for teachers in schools in the order of 7,000 teachers for Saxony from 2010 to 15 and a similar amount from 2015 to 20 was projected in the lower range. And primary schools were also clearly involved in this. And that was not enough to close these study programmes in Dresden anyway, to maintain them. They were closed anyway, even though the figures were public.

27:58
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

There is also the egoism of the subjects and the shirt is closer than the skirt. And then there are decisions here in our own faculty to spare our own department, to give up primary school Teacher Education. And these decisions have been made. These were the colleagues sitting in the room next door. And I was the Managing Director of the Center for Teacher Education, who fought with others to preserve Teacher Education. And the Rectorate basically wanted to preserve these structures through the decision and was interested in doing so. That's the way politics works. We know who the responsible ministers were and we know who was not open to rational arguments and figures put forward by the Centers.

28:51
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

Let's come back now, we've described the institutional context a little, we've described the political space a little. Now for your own activities over the years, what is actually important for such a management? Well, when you started, you were very few people, barely a handful. What drove you or what is necessary to maintain your standing in the university so that you are not pushed to the side?

29:21
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

There were a handful of people who were very convinced that this was the right way to go and that teaching is an important profession and that you have to think about schools and your own children. It's not just about fiscal considerations, which may be right for politicians, or internal university problems. 300 jobs are to be cut. Let's divide them up among the faculties and then so and so many jobs will have to be given up in the field of educational sciences. The whole thing is sold as a rational process and then the first position becomes free for international affairs. Everyone says that internationalisation is important, the most important topic of all. But this position is then cancelled as the first C4 position. There are a lot of irrationalities that we had to deal with. But the motivation of this group was there.

I think the collaboration was important and also the feedback to the colleagues in the specialised didactics, in the subjects. But there were many points where we were close to the end. It was also an enormous burden for me personally. And I also sought advice and coaching on how to proceed strategically. You have to think about that again. I'll say it again, the colleague next door has decided to close your shop. How do you deal with that? You see him every day.

31:05
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

But I think, Wolfgang, it was also the case that the three of us who were on the founding committee actually understood each other perfectly right from the start and knew what we wanted. And nothing was left unsaid when the door was closed. And that helped a lot and sometimes relieved the frustration that we brought with us. And we had a number of colleagues, as you said, in the specialised didactics who were just as committed and supported us. I think that was the basis. The second thing that helped me, that drove me, was the support in my own field. Well, I've already had a lot to do with schools and the Ministry of Education in my environment, through the education servers, digitalisation and all that, and the feedback from the teachers that we constantly had here at the university.
And that has always driven me to do something there that benefits schools and Teacher Education.

32:01
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

Let's turn it around a bit and slowly see how things have developed. So we started this QUER project together, in other words we started to rethink the need for replacements and to implement this in concrete terms. A new programme for lateral entry or for qualified lateral entry. That one wasn't easy either, I'm sure you can say a bit more about it, then we're already in the 2010s, 2012s. But I want to go back to the fact that you said that you were very much a team of three, that you strengthened yourselves and also had support from the faculties or the specialised didactics. From my perspective, I would say that it may also have been a bit of the GDR tradition that was passed on. You knew each other very well and had such an incredibly close relationship and there wasn't, I'm directing this towards Steffen.

And the other thing is that, from the West German perspective, perhaps because of history, there was not yet such a strong move towards individual target agreements, where people are not paid according to how much commitment they show in Teacher Education, but rather how many essays they write and how much third-party funding they produce. So your creativity and dynamism could also exist, so to speak, because there were no other reference points of pressure for professorships?

33:51
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

So, the tradition thing is by no means the case, because the colleagues who supported it came from all over and it was simply the attitude towards Teacher Education that drove us. And it helped the whole thing that some of the staff in the departments were people I had known personally for 10 or more years. And in this way, of course, we got to the point more quickly and came to an understanding and helped each other and so on. So that was absolutely not the case. The pressure that was there with the third-party funding and the like was of course also there in the faculty.

At the time, thank God, I had a dean, Andreas Fitzmann, you could say, who was also very committed to Teacher Education, who told me at the time, pay attention, it's not just the third-party funding that counts, but you have five deputies here, half teaching posts and let's add up what that makes in terms of money and that's actually also third-party funding. And this double view was often not there.

35:03
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

This dilemma was there. My research was carried out at the faculty and there was compensation funding for DFG projects. And that was school-related research. I could just as easily have carried out these studies here on aggression and violence among pupils or on health status, the WHO study, at the ZLSB. But then I would have undermined my own professorship. This dilemma was always there and we then started with programme-related research, smaller-scale research, so to speak, which concerned Teacher Education and the evaluation of study programmes. And I could very well imagine that studies like the one Fend did or the one we did could strengthen the Centers' research profile. That was a dilemma for me at the time. So, if I had brought the projects to the ZLSB, I would have diminished my own professorship, so to speak.

36:15
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

I believe that this is also an issue for the current Managing Director, yes, definitely.

36:20
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

So, you're hitting on exactly one perspective in the shift of responsibility. The attention in the size of the current organisation basically makes it necessary to do it full-time, because you're actually responsible for 70 people and another 60 at BQL, the lateral entry project. I always say that I run a "small medium-sized company" with team structures and so on. That has accumulated with you, but has developed further. And that leads precisely to this dilemma that you have, and we have it in the research at the Center, you said the small projects over the last few years, also as part of the quality offensive, we will come to that in a moment, that we have said that we organise accompanying Teacher Education research.

And for me personally, I come from Teacher Education research, so I was able to link my individual interests and these research interests with the interests of the Center or our common interests, which we have established, with the alternative routes into the profession, with the Center structure. But you have to find something that fits.

37:35
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

But tell me, wasn't it also much more difficult to get third-party funding for this area? I remember that we once wrote up and applied for a research training group in the joint Teacher Education Commission at the end of the 1990s. In retrospect, I've now leafed through it again, and it was a great idea that was behind it, but the reviewing body dismissed it without the necessary depth. And I think it really was very difficult in this period, perhaps until 2010, to get research funded by other bodies in this area of educational science research and Teacher Education. It was perhaps always a little easier in computer science. There were web-based projects funded by the EU and so on. It was easier to get a foot in the door there. But it was complicated in those areas and the review and approval process was also very difficult.

38:54
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

I would confirm that first. Let me take the example that Wolfgang Melzer and I have in common. He basically hijacked me as Managing Director, didn't tell me everything when he put me in charge, but found a project where we joined forces. The was the QUER project, basically the first option for organising alternative career paths. And the interesting thing was that it wasn't actually funded by the federal government, nor by the state, but by the European Social Fund for the structural development of peripheral areas or regional contexts, i.e. disadvantaged regions. That was basically the context. But we were actually able to establish a link between the professorship and the Center for the first time, I would say.

And €1 million flowed in and that made a real bang, didn't it?

39:47
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

I am and was ambivalent about lateral entry programmes. The question is whether these training programmes, if they are developed with quality, can be equivalent. The standards for accepting lateral entrants at the time were very high. I would say that 80% of those who are now lateral entrants would not have been admitted to our programme because the selection criteria were so high. So two subjects, training in two subjects and so on. It was simply a great opportunity given the difficulty of acquiring research funding. I would have taken it if it had been a different topic, I would honestly say that you can do a lot with this research. And I believe that the project was still a model.

I believe that the way we qualified people in practice was the better model compared to what is happening today. I would like to see people receive an undergraduate qualification, including in educational science. I would also like to see support during the professional integration phase. When I think about research, I would like to know what has become of the people, what difficulties do they have to contend with? There was a certain amount of accompanying research, which then died down. But I would go further today and would ask what interests me about the impact of the fact that there are so many or so few, how much we don't know exactly, lateral entrants at the various schools? What effect does this have on cooperation within the teaching staff? What effect does this have on the quality of teaching? How does this affect the pupils?

And here I see an opportunity to link and combine school research with QUER research and to look a little deeper than just looking at what the retention rate is, how many dropouts there are and so on, although I am very aware of the methodological problems. How do I measure that, the effects, the causalities?

42:30
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

At the time, we were already having broad discussions about what such projects could look like, what could be researched? That's when I slowly came round to it in the 2010s. We did the project until 2014, 2014, 2015, and then the same people who said in 2012 that we didn't need such a project came to us and said, Mr Gehrmann, let's do it. It was interesting that it actually came from the same people or from the same organisations. But then they also recognised it. But we also had to realise that we couldn't implement everything we wanted. In this respect, there is still a lack of specialisation in educational science.

At the same time, however, I would say that in Dresden alone, 1000 people have since been qualified in a programme that is unique in the Federal Republic, in that there is actually a two-day supervision over two years, a university connection, which does not exist in most contexts in the Federal Republic. So of course there are compromises here too. It's a question of money and also a question of how quickly people are available to the labour market. But I don't think we want to deepen this discussion now, but rather look at it again. You are actually now looking ahead to the time after you. So, I'll take the QUER project, a project for €1 million. Then, during the transition period - Wolfgang Melzer left and I joined the ZLSB in 2012 - we sat down together for the first time to discuss the Quality Offensive for Teacher Education (QLB). This later developed into TUD-SYLBER (Synergetic Teacher Education in an Excellent Framework).

I remember how we made the first papers, the first paper, I looked at it again the other day. Did you expect what it would actually become in 2012?

44:29
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

Absolutely not.

44:30
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

Link this to the perspective of the last few years.

44:34
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

I was certainly hopeful, but it was a time when we were looking for additional funding and staff in various places to get things moving. That was actually our endeavour and we grazed all the fields and looked everywhere to see what we could do. And, I have to say, unfortunately we didn't always have the support of the relevant ministries. So, it was a few thousand euros that I needed from the SMK at the time to perhaps realise a larger project with the SMWK, which I didn't get. Otherwise we would have been three steps ahead in terms of digitalisation. But, in that respect, every stalk was nice and we tried to make it fit and bring in our things and make it as multi-layered as possible so that it would have a broad impact on the university and that we could also make a difference.

Actually with the same focus that we had from the beginning. We want Teacher Education at the university to be at a very good level. We want to have an impact from the university into the schools. These were actually the things that I believe have been an important milestone from the very beginning in the founding phase until today.

46:03
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

So, I have accompanied this with great appreciation and TUD-SYLBER was the right topic at the right time. If you had had the same topic 20 years earlier, you wouldn't have had the resources for it. The programme was designed for it. The problem today is that the programme has come to an end. What is the new perspective now? The second, I can't say the exact details, but the results of SYLBER extend into practice, into the region, into the institution, into the counselling, into the structures that are being improved. First, second, third phase. In other words, an ideal combination of theory and practice, which is highly recognised and admired. And it has brought the ZLSB renown at the university, that is to be noted for now, but something like that also evaporates quickly. And in that respect, every era has its challenges.

So, I think we are now at a turning point where, as Managing Director, as the person responsible at the ZLSB, you have to think about where the journey is going now that everything has consolidated and developed so wonderfully.

47:33
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

But you also have to give Axel credit now for the way he defied and withstood this resistance and opposition back then. I took my hat off to him then and I still do today.

47:49
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

We have been in dialogue about this and have also had many an empowering conversation about it. Some things seemed familiar.

47:58
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

Yes, of course that's helpful. On the other hand, you're in the wind and have to do it yourself. But you have to realise, I think, that the momentum at the time, when we're talking about players, was also understood by the new rector to support it for the moment. So Mrs Schäfer supported it, and then Mr Müller-Steinhagen also supported it. I don't think some people in the faculties really understood it at first. Some wanted to turn it around and use it for themselves.

And I think we have done three things with TUD-SYLBER. We have done something for the organisation of the Center, we have done something for quality assurance and we have developed exactly what we wanted to do for regional networking so that we can reach a wider area. And we did that twice, then together with the professionals, and then we couldn't submit any more applications because we had exhausted everything. The Leipzig team hadn't been successful and then we had to work on another digitalisation project together with the Leipzig team.

So, to summarise, €14.5 million is on the clock, so that with all the other projects from the last few years, I can say that it's over a million: It started with a million, but we are now at 35 or so. So that shows how the employee structure has developed and how projects and, also something like Schullogin with you now in IT, simply come to us because the ZLSB institution, I believe, then also works.

49:36
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

Yes, but you also have to say that these are things that we had as ideas in our first concept. We have to, you said earlier about the examinations office and study office, you managed to institutionalise that through the project. That didn't just fall out of the sky. And things have come about that we always formulated as wishes and ideas as clouds. And they have now become reality thanks to the projects and the commitment. And that's actually the nice thing. And I also believe that the project has also recognised the trend of the times and has invested heavily in digitalisation. I remember the first round of projects, I think there were only five or six universities across Germany that were doing something in the direction of digitalisation and Teacher Education, out of the 20 projects in total. That was frightening and you really got it on track back then.

50:43
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

We are slowly turning into the home straight. Perhaps we can actually say something about the legalisation of the Centers. Well, they started in the 90s without a legal figure. There was then a half-sentence in the Saxon Higher Education Act from 2012, which always stated that every Teacher Education university should establish a Center, paragraph 92. That was all it said. So what is the organisational structure, what should a Center look like? What should be done? There has now been a section 99 since 2023, which states what the Center does. And if you look at your original texts again, Steffen, what do you actually see there? Well, the scales have fallen from my eyes.

51:33
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

Yes, the thoughts we had were not so wrong.

51:39
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

Yes, I can say that a vision has become reality. We couldn't have achieved it like this at the time. This is a great basis for the Centers to continue their work. So the existence of the Centers is not being called into question by anyone, and cannot be questioned by critics.

52:07
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

Well, that was also important to us. We have also tried to be effective. It no longer says that every Teacher Education institution establishes a Center for Teacher Education, but I have it here again. It says "a university that offers Teacher Education courses operates a Center for Teacher Education". So it's set up for the long term. And there are certain tasks, I just want to say that one is the constitutional norm and the other is of course the constitutional reality. Who actually underpins the structure now? That which has partly financed the quality offensive should now actually be transformed into the basic structure. And this is precisely where the next central conflict arises. It's about money and resources.

What would you advise us to do and what do we have to endure now or how do we have to move forward to ensure that the equipment is not just temporary?

53:17
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

If such new structures have proved their worth, then they must be run on a permanent basis. This is simply the result of 20 years of efforts to train teachers in such a Center. However, I can see that the idea of establishing a centralised academic institution back then is the decisive factor in how this has developed at TU Dresden. Now we have to define the minimum that a university has to invest in this. After all, 10% of students are still studying to become teachers. 14%, a few more than back then. So this percentage must also be firmly anchored in resources for Teacher Education. And that applies to all these things that are developing and changing. This also applies to the areas of digitalisation in Teacher Education.

I have to do something on a basic level at a university in the first phase of education and I have to create resources for this. Otherwise I'll be sending graduates to schools who don't fulfil the needs of the students.

54:34
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

Wolfgang, what would you say?

54:36
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

The idea at the time, if I may quote, was also the basic idea of integration. That was our guiding principle for Teacher Education as a whole. The aim is to integrate previously hermetically separated training phases of research and teaching, theory and practice of different teaching specialisms for specific types of school. I want to say something about this in a moment. In the sense of a polyvalence of graduates, also in the sense of a professional training of pupils of different origins, nationalities, genders and schools. So the repercussions of the training on the school have already been discussed here. We actually had the idea back then and we now also have a new type of school, the community school in the Schools Act. And there are teachers for all types of school, but there are no teachers for community schools. And the idea back then, as in other federal states, was to train teachers for school levels. So an idea from back then has not been realised.

And the question is whether this is not still relevant or whether this question of the type of school, where nobody wants to burn their fingers, should not even be included. So in research, at least in connection with the studies I outlined earlier on lateral entry and lateral entry, that we want to invest more in qualitative school research or qualitative not in the sense of qualitative methods, but in the quality, in the evaluation of the quality of training in schools, whether this cannot and must not be an initial spark, now that the programmes have expired and where it is difficult to acquire course-related funding, whether the link to previous school research would not be a possibility, also in connection with digitalisation, new media and so on.

56:58
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

Let me pick up on that. One is the internal perspective. I'm looking at paragraph 99, under paragraph 1, point 9, it says that it fulfils these tasks, i.e. the Centers, in particular through quality assurance in Teacher Education courses and support in the evaluation of teaching. This is, so to speak, internal quality assurance. It is clear that this is the task of the Center structure. We still have a bit of work to do, because others are also concerned with the quality of teaching and believe they can use it to map Teacher Education programmes. So that is also a conflict within the university. So what is the role of the Center? I would say that we need to articulate ourselves even more loudly, because the expertise gained over the 20 years lies systematically in the observation of Teacher Education courses within the Center structure. So that's one thing.

And the other thing is, I'm actually thinking more and more about which market it's actually being made for. The school market is clearly changing. Demographically, regionally, structurally, peripheral areas, from a metropolitan perspective. With the fall of communism, it was already clear that there would be a two-tier system in East Germany after the common primary school period. The next step, however, would actually be the tiered structure, i.e. thinking about what a school for everyone actually looks like in the area. Because we may no longer be able to maintain a structured two-tier system . And accordingly, our task is perhaps to research this and think about it. Is that the direction you mean?

58:57
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

Yes, also in connection with the organisers of these processes, i.e. both the teachers and the students, but also at the universities. So, I can see that due to general social developments, many people have reached a high level of exhaustion. And I don't know exactly - I haven't been in teaching for 13 years - how this new generation of students is set up, how motivated they are, how resilient they are, whether studies of the kind that Schaarschmidt did at the time might be an idea for replication. I'm also not sure about the situation in schools, which has not improved. I say lateral entry again, if teachers come in for 10 years who are not as well qualified as the teachers we used to train, what impact does that have?

So you have to carry out studies on the school climate and the pupils' competences and try to bring them together. That is also the idea of a project network, where we can and must perhaps join forces with psychologists, with representatives of different subjects here. Perhaps a special research Center could be established at the university. So that the ZLSB gets out of this monolithic organisation. We have also had positive experiences in the past with such a large SFB, which has had effects and spillover effects as far as East Germany from Bielefeld University.

01:00:47
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

I'll come back to this in a moment.

01:00:50
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

Perhaps thinking in a completely different way, not just in terms of schools, but in terms of training. I believe that such a research area could also look at whether the type of training structures that have developed in Teacher Education over the last 50 years are still appropriate for the times. Whether other forms of subject and didactic training can be found or whether some things can be reduced and others strengthened and deepened so that graduates can cope with the changed school. I think this question is more relevant today than it was 10 or 20 years ago. I think it's a long time ago to say that first you're experts and then you have a bit of didactics and psychology and then you go to school.

01:01:50
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

As a Center, we are also in demand in the discussion about teachers' working hours. I myself have also been asked to join the working group. The future of the school is also being considered. It's clear that the Center has received a level of attention that it perhaps wouldn't have had in the past, for the bundling of potential research on the subject itself in a place like the university. And, I think, in terms of perspective, we are very much thinking with our colleagues about how we can now support such structural developments of transformation in Lusatia, for example. And that's where things like this come together, digitalisation, how can you reach the area, how can you anchor lateral entry more firmly in the region?

How can you perhaps throw a kind of umbrella over eastern Saxony from the TU, perhaps create places beyond Dresden so that people can link up with Teacher Education in the area? So, these are things that really concern us and that we are also discussing with colleagues who will now be working there, who also see, the astrophysicists in Lusatia, that without a proper educational policy foundation, it is of course also difficult to attract specialists and keep people in the region. And in this respect, we are often in demand and also on the move. We have to see how this develops.

Let's come to the end. 20 years, look ahead a bit for an organisation like this. You have a certain distance, you were there for a long time. What would you recommend to the Center, but also to the Managing Director, who has just been reappointed for three years? What needs to be done?

01:04:00
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

Definitely a nice celebration, a nice event that I unfortunately can't attend. In the past, it would have been a matter of course to put family and other things on the back burner, but I'm turning 77 these days and this time I've prioritised that. So congratulations anyway and have another enjoyable time. I see the dilemma of standing on one leg in the Center, perhaps even on 1.5 legs, and still being successful in a Faculty of Education, which in my view is in great need of support.

01:04:43
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

As the saying goes, when you celebrate an anniversary like this, you realise how you've grown older, but you can still follow and observe things. And I think it's great that we are once again forced to talk and think about the past, in inverted commas, and that we have brought back some things that we had almost forgotten. I hope that the Center and the progress made there will continue to be held in such high esteem and receive greater attention at the university and in Teacher Education in Saxony and, from a completely selfish point of view, of course, that digitalisation will make a significant contribution to this and that it will also be wanted in Teacher Education and in the administration and development of schools and Teacher Education. I think that seems important these days, so that it is not all so appendage-like, but that it becomes a self-contained whole in the future. This is also the best way to reach pupils.

01:05:54
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

Thank you very, very much. Well, I really enjoyed looking at your old papers again during the preparation, some of which I didn't even know. And somehow there is actually something that has always motivated me. There used to be research into so-called morphogenetic fields. This means that when experiments are carried out in Japan with mice, you can train them to walk through corridors in a certain way. And if this has been done there, then mice in Germany can also do it without having practised it beforehand. Interesting. And maybe that's what happened here too. So, you've driven something and used it to get something going that others have picked up on without knowing exactly what it was like beforehand.

It made me think once again about the kind of waters we are actually travelling in. And thank you very much for that. You can see these perspectives from these initial papers. You can see a certain continuity and you can also see, as I try to tell my employees more often when things are difficult, that progress is always a snail's pace at the moment. But when you sit down with such experienced colleagues, you realise what has actually developed over time. And that just makes me very happy.

And I'm also really looking forward to the event. It's a shame, Wolfgang, that you won't be there, but we couldn't... so there was simply no other opportunity. You just have to look. The dates are always rare and we're looking forward to the event together.

We will be recording some of it and so you will also get to see some of it as an alumnus. And I hope you'll enjoy it too. So, once again, thank you very much. I think we've gone through the history of the ZLSB quite well. We've seen how something becomes institutionalised, how a Center starts small and grows bigger.

01:07:59
Speaker 2: Steffen Friedrich

Thank you very much for the invitation and for letting us remember.

01:08:14
Speaker 3: Wolfgang Melzer

Many thanks and congratulations.

01:08:17
Speaker 1: Axel Gehrmann

Thank you very much and all the best. Have a nice afternoon.

Outro
Juliane Sichler:

That was our look back at two decades of ZLSB history. We hope that you have been able to gain some exciting insights and knowledge. We are now looking forward to the future with great anticipation and are excited to see how the ZLSB will develop over the next 20 years. Thank you for joining us today and for listening to us.