Teacher-Student-Relationships in Teacher Education: Exploring Three Projects of Knowledge Transfer into Action

Abstract

How teachers are best educated is a question that has been discussed for a long time. One perspective to this debate focuses particularly on dovetailing theoretical knowledge with practice. The present research is devoted to the specific exploration of this dovetailing: Three projects are presented that allow a direct transfer of knowledge into practice. The critical knowledge in the projects focuses explicitly on creating a supportive teacher-student-relationship. In the theoretical part of this contribution, the relevance of a supportive teacher-student-relationship is discussed according to the background of teacher stu-dents' apprenticeship of observation. The research question is if the projects deliver strategies, ways and solutions to challenge the contents of apprentice-ship of observation and accordingly to transfer empirically-based knowledge into action of teachers with regard to creating a supportive teacher-student-relationship. Project 1 refers to accompanied sponsorships between teacher students and pupils (N = 15), project 2 combines classroom management knowledge with teaching social learning in a class (N = 13) and project 3 re-fers to the reintegration of mentally ill students back to school (N = 10). Qua-litative analysis of knowledge transfer grounds on self-reports of teacher stu-dents and partly observation of teacher educators. The results hint to the value of action in academic education and are discussed in relation to their effects of gaining competencies and their feasibility.