Inclusive teaching of inclusion. Impulses for an inclusion-oriented development of academic teacher education

Abstract

The main topic of this contribution is the development of an inclusion-oriented teacher training at universities. We do not aim to add on to the extensive debate of which concepts and methods enable students to acquire the scientific, didactic and pedagogical competencies that qualify them to cope with diversity in schools. Instead, our focus lies on the question of how to design structures for inclusive higher education itself. We illustrate measures of higher education development and the qualification of university lecturers that are employed within the context of the project DoProfiL (Dortmund profile for inclusion-oriented teacher training) at the Technical University of Dortmund with the aim of increasing awareness of and qualifying lecturers for inclusive approaches to inclusion-oriented teacher education. The formats for teacher training resulting from the project have a twofold potential. At first they enable students in various different life circumstances (e. g. disabilities) to equally participate in the academic education process. Secondly, the mere topical analysis of inclusion is exceeded, as students are able to vividly experience inclusion in the academic classroom. In reference to Plate (2016), we regard this as a crucial requirement for qualifying future teachers to deal with inclusive educational processes in schools.