IZeF cooperates with the Graduate School for Teacher Education - GSLB in order to promote and improve the acquisition of competences in research methods for doctoral students of the University of Cologne in the field of teaching. Therefore, a methodological advising office was established as of April 01, 2021.

This offers structured and individual advice and support for graduates of the teacher training program who are writing a dissertation in the field of quantitative and quantitative-qualitative empirical methods within the program of the Graduate School for Teacher Training. This is a response to the need created by the sometimes inadequate methodological training in teacher training programs, which leaves little room for comprehensive competence building in empirical research methods during the course, as well as the strongly divergent methodological approaches in dissertations in empirical educational research, which often require specialized knowledge. Especially at the beginning of their dissertation phase, many doctoral students are faced with the challenge of working on a topic area in which the necessary methodological knowledge must first be acquired.

The newly established methods office serves the doctoral students in their knowledge building and the implementation of empirical research. The focus is on individual consultation, e.g. on questions regarding research design, survey procedures, questionnaire construction or statistical evaluation procedures.

Furthermore, the cooperation of IZeF and GSLB aims at expanding the collaboration in order to create a better network within the methodological field and to stimulate the exchange of content. Existing resources of both institutions are to be networked more closely and made more easily available to doctoral students. The consulting and coaching services are to be systematically expanded and further developed, and the services offered by IZeF and the GSLB are to be more intensively interlinked on an ongoing basis.
We provide information about current offers here.

This is a pilot project with a duration of three years for the structured support of doctoral students of the GSLB in the field of empirical research methods.
The program will be continuously developed and evaluated with the aim of improving methodological competence.

Offers from IZeF and GSLB

In order to be able to consider research methodological questions in the context of empirical teacher education research, IZeF offers GSLB doctoral students, among other things, various opportunities to participate, e.g. in ongoing research projects in the individual IZeF research groups, where topics for dissertations in the projects are regularly advertised. The GSLB offers a large support network for doctoral students in all phases of their doctoral studies, ranging from individual advice (e.g. scientific work and writing) to workshops.