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Erdkunde / Geography (First State Examination / Extended Examination)

Program: Erdkunde/ Geography
Degree: First State Examination
Program length: 9 semesters / 4.5 years (240 ECTS points)
Start: Winter semester

Description

The subject of "Erdkunde / Geography" in the Teaching in Secondary Schools program is oriented based on the requirements of the practice of teaching Geography at secondary schools. The program imparts the subject and teaching-related principles for exercising the teaching profession at secondary schools and collects initial experiences in practical teaching in schools, following academic instruction.

The university education offers a broad spectrum of geography, as a modern earth system science, with the fields of physical and human geography, as well as didactics, the strengths of which particularly lie in the expert analysis of regionally significant structures and their dynamics in the area of human-environmental interfacing. The program qualifies students for academic work and for the socially responsible execution of the teaching profession based on the acquired expertise; that is, through knowledge, qualifications and perspectives.

Future teachers become professionally qualified to analyze, plan, design and reflect educational processes in the instruction of geography in schools.

Major topics

The subject matter of the program in the natural sciences branch includes climate geography, as well as the additional fields of biogeography, hydrogeography and soil geography and geomorphology, in a process-oriented and interconnected consideration of the environment and its dynamics.

The socio-economics-based human geography branch covers the fields of population geography, urban geography, economic and service geography and the geography of peripheral regions, which are of high interest in a modern society in the global, regional and local context, and discusses cross-regional action and its consequences.

The interfaces in human-environmental processes are explicitly considered and analyzed. Furthermore, there is a methodological component: the capability to visualize and evaluate spatial data is one of the central competencies taught. Methodological competencies in the field of statistics, geographical information systems or empirical social research are supporting pillars of geography as a whole.

The subject matter of didactics in geography includes the imparting of regionally significant content on the level of understanding of the recipients, normally students. The didactics of geography works both hermeneutically as well as normatively, and increasingly also empirically. The following considerations are at the center of interest:

scientific orientation or societal orientation, position in respect of reference sciences, the importance of the social sciences and environmental education or the significance of methodology in the acquisition of key competencies.

Objectives

With completion of your teacher training program, with the First State Examination and the subsequent teacher traineeship (Second State Examination), you not only obtain access to the teaching profession, but interdisciplinary qualifications as well.

You then have the option to begin a Master or Doctorate program in one of your respective subjects. Changing to the Bachelor program during the course of studying is always possible.

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