The Teacher Shortage and the Impact on Teacher Education

1st Dresden Conference on
Lateral Entry and Second Career Teachers
November 24th – 26th, 2020 in Dresden, Germany
TU Dresden – Center for Teacher Education and Educational Research (ZLSB)

The conference will take place online. The conference will be held in English. No conference fees will be charged.

About the conference:

The paths to the teaching profession traditionally follow a well-established pattern of academic qualification. Typically, teacher biographies correspond to the intended path of school education to higher education and back to school education by turning young students into teaching professionals. This fundamental principle of professionalization is considered to be a historically grown consensus in modern societies. Most educational systems have developed accordingly despite varying degrees of institutional and organizational structures. In the 21st century, many countries face key challenges in teacher education, in particular the problem of recruiting a suitable number of qualified teachers mainly due to the demographic developments in society. Keywords like “the teacher shortage” are being increasingly used indicating the existing pressure to change and innovate national teacher education systems. This leads to innovative and flexible concepts of “lateral entry”, “second career teacher programs” or “alternative ways to teacher profession”. Since around 10 years teacher shortage turns out to be one of the main challenges in school education and consequently became an objective for German teacher education as well. Nowadays the demand for teachers grew dramatically to the extent that the labour market could provide not even half of the required candidates in some German federal states. In order to stabilize the system, non-professional teachers are currently employed in great numbers at schools. For this reason, we face a growing demand for qualification programs for these second career teachers.

The Free State of Saxony is currently the only region in Germany with a systematic qualification concept to train non-professional teachers within the academic framework of the professionalization in teacher education. As a part of the institutionalized concept of non-traditional paths to the teaching profession, TU Dresden, like other Saxon universities, offers a part-time qualification program for teachers taking part in the Saxon lateral entry program. With over 400 participants the ZLSB provides a profound expertise in questions of organization, programmatic and didactic designs as well as scientific research activities on these forms of alternative qualifications in teacher education.

The 1st Dresden Conference on Lateral Entry and Second Career Teachers aims to strengthen the international exchange on the topic of non-traditional pathways to the teaching profession and promote joint research activities as well as joint development projects with our international guests. We would like to invite you to share your experiences, research results and ideas for further cooperation with us as well as colleagues from all over the world and with us here in Dresden.

Objectives:

• Presentation, discussion and promotion of educational research on the topic of lateral entry to the teacher profession
• Comparative studies on different national developments, strategies and frameworks of non-traditional pathways to the teacher profession
• Development of future cooperation strategies with regard to joint research activities
• We look forward to your proposals and to your participation in the conference.  

Conference topics:

Section A – Macro level: Political frameworks, concepts and governance
Keywords:

• Current challenges in societies and educational systems
• Standards and regulations
• Institutions and organizations
• Impact on school systems and administrations  

Section B – Meso level: Non-traditional qualification concepts
Keywords:

• Recruitment and qualification of teachers
• (Academic) qualification models
• Learning culture in (academic) qualification settings
• Conditions of professionalization: effectiveness and success of qualification concepts  

Section C – Micro level: Teaching and learning
Keywords:

• Preconditions for professionalization: demographics, biographies, (pre-) professional identities
• Conditions and requirements of teacher training in higher education
• (Digital) support systems for teaching and learning
• Impact on learning and teaching cultures in schools

Insights into the Conference

International Conference on nontraditional Pathways into the Teaching Profession at ZLSB

The LETE-Team:

Prof. Dr. Axel Gehrmann, Managing Director of ZLSB, host of the conference, Ms Peggy Germer, Mr Thomas Bárány, Mr Julian Hoischen, Ms Dagmar Oertel

Contact us:  

Should you need further clarifications or have any inquiries, please do not hesitate to contact us: