On Thursday, 10 July 2025, at 5:30 pm, the University of Cologne will celebrate the establishment of the University of Cologne Teacher Education Hub, a new strategic platform for teacher education. All those involved in teacher training – academics, staff and students from the four relevant Faculties – will be working together in the areas of research and innovation, teaching, learning and transfer.
This networking in terms of both themes and content will contribute to ensuring that the university is reaching its potential when it comes to teacher training. “A highly effective education system is crucial for the long-term viability of our society. Excellent research calls for excellent teacher training, laying the foundations for a science-based, democratic shaping of the future of our society”, says Professor Dr Joybrato Mukherjee, Rector of the University of Cologne.
“With its Teacher Education Hub, the University of Cologne will enable academic and science-based, interdisciplinary collaboration in all areas of performance. In cooperation with the schools and centres for practical teacher training in the Cologne region, it will therefore generate leverage, helping for instance to combat the shortage of teachers. Transfer through further education and training for active teaching staff and in the context of innovative projects also represent further aims of the new platform,” says Professor Dr Beatrix Busse, Vice-Rector for Teaching and Studies.
The platform reflects the broad and diverse expertise behind our teacher education: teaching methodology and academic disciplines, special education, educational sciences, vocational training, and practical phases as well as research, teaching and transfer in teacher training – these are all part of the picture. Student teachers at the University of Cologne are automatically members of the platform, and academics and employees in administration and management whose activities are focussed on teacher training can become members too. Those involved in teacher training at cooperating universities, the German Sport University Cologne (DSHS) and the Cologne University of Music and Dance (HfMT), are also network partners in the hub.
Under the leadership of a five-member, transdisciplinary academic management team, all stakeholders are actively involved in shaping teacher training within the framework of innovative activities in research, teaching and transfer and will be developing this further with their respective expertise.
Thanks to the participative, co-creative culture of the platform, students will benefit directly from the more intensely interdisciplinary research and be thus even better prepared for the growing social challenges they will also be facing in schools. Within their schools, the graduates will thus become ambassadors for the academic habitus practised at the University of Cologne.
In addition to regional, global, national, international and social networking, the hub will also expand cross-phase collaboration between all stakeholders involved in teacher training – from collaboration with schools, student recruitment, degree programmes and traineeships to further and continuing education. With a scientific focus on research into teacher training at the university, it will have an impact on all other areas of teacher training.
The new cooperation agreement for the Cologne training region will also be signed at the opening ceremony on 10 July. This documents the cooperation between the university and the Centres for Practical Teacher Training in Cologne, Leverkusen, Engelskirchen, Siegburg, Düren and Jülich along with over 800 schools involved in the practical semester.
Alongside speeches given by the Rector of the University, Professor Dr Joybrato Mukherjee, and the Chairman of the School and Continuing Education Committee of the City of Cologne, Dr Nils Helge Schlieben, the Minister for Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia, Ina Brandes, and the Minister for Schools and Education, Dorothee Feller, will be honouring the establishment of the platform by way of a digital message. The platform and its future-oriented features will then be presented by Professor Dr Beatrix Busse, the Vice-Rector for Teaching and Studies. Finally, the cooperation agreement for the training region will be signed.
Media Contact:
Professor Dr Beatrix Busse
Vice-Rector for Teaching and Studies
prorektorat-lehre-studium@verw.uni-koeln.de