Subject: General Studies

As a primary school teacher, you will prepare your pupils to analyse and understand phenomena in their everyday world from a subject-specific perspective. The nine subject areas – Everyday Culture and Health, Biology, Chemistry, Geography, History, Physics, Political Science, Technology and Economics – form the common framework for this.

These subjects – or perspectives – with their specific ways of perceiving, thinking and working to gain knowledge, open up specific perspectives on phenomena in the world around us. However, understanding current and future societal challenges requires a problem-oriented integration of these subject-specific perspectives.

At the start of your primary school teacher training programme, you will choose one of the nine subjects as your specialism – in other words, a particular focus – from either the natural sciences and technology or the social sciences within general studies (the so-called specialism areas). In this specialism, you will develop your subject-specific and pedagogical skills in depth.

In addition, you will take modules from the other perspectives of general studies as well as interdisciplinary modules.

Four good reasons why studying general studies at our university is special:

1. Subject-specific knowledge and pedagogy
   A large proportion of the modules in the teacher training programme for general studies interweave subject-specific knowledge and pedagogy. Focusing on child-centred questions about the subject matter (phenomena of the everyday world), the programme explores from the very beginning how appropriate learning pathways for children can be developed on the basis of subject-specific knowledge and with the help of subject-specific teaching principles.
2. Specialisation and Integration
   On the one hand, you will deepen your knowledge of your chosen specialism; on the other, you will acquire the skills to integrate all perspectives within General Studies. Through introductory modules (2A, 2B and 2C) as well as a wide range of options for specialisation in modules 2D, 4A, 4B and 4C, you will gain a thorough overview of the breadth of perspectives in general studies, enabling you to address complex topics in this subject from multiple angles and in a way that is accessible to primary school children.
3. Interdisciplinary Project Seminar
   In the interdisciplinary project seminar, you will work independently, methodically and reflectively on self-selected research questions to explore the objects and phenomena of the real world.
4. The Teaching and Learning Laboratories
   Our teaching and learning laboratories enrich your studies in many key subjects within general studies. Furthermore, laboratories such as the newly established Democracy Laboratory and the existing Sustainability Laboratory explore cross-perspective tasks and subject areas within general studies in greater depth.