The degree program comprises compulsory modules and compulsory elective modules. Compulsory modules include Introduction to Education, Historical and Systematic Foundations of Education, Education Research, Fields of Work in Education, Introduction to Educational Fields as well as the internship and the Bachelor’s thesis. The compulsory elective modules are Educational Foundations and Educational Research. After the first year (the second semester), students take a preliminary examination (Grundlagen- und Orientierungsprüfung, GOP), which is considered passed if at least two modules are completed successfully. In the context of the Bachelor’s thesis, students are encouraged to start conducting independent scientific work.

A central element of the degree program is the discussion, analysis and reflection of social and cultural differences tied to education in the context of ongoing social transformation processes including the associated institutions and organizations (e.g. migration and refugees, digitalization, transnationalization, social segregation, poverty).

The Bachelor’s degree in Education has a focus on education in general. The degree program and the perspectives offered are based on the Institute’s main key research priorities: Organizational education and culture and aesthetic education.

• Interest in cultural and societal contexts in relation to educational, pedagogical, and learning processes, and the ways in which individuals shape their identities
• The willingness and ability to read and write large amounts of text (good reading comprehension skills and good written communication skills)
• The willingness and ability to deal with specialist language and foreign terms
• An openness toward texts written in English
• The ability to deal with more demanding texts in a critical and reflective manner

In the consecutive Master’s degree program in Education, you have the opportunity to delve deeper into the aspects mentioned above with regard to aesthetic and cultural education, international education, media education and organizational education.

The degree program supports students in developing professional ways of thinking and acting as well as analytical skills in addition to skills in education and the ability to reflect in the following areas:

• Educational management in the field of continuing education
• Professional training and development
• HR and organizational development in companies
• General and vocational adult education as lecturers at state or private educational institutions (e.g. adult education centers, educational organizations).
• Education research (after a Master’s degree)
• Youth education outside school
• Media education
• Cultural educational institutions (e.g. cultural centers)
• Art and cultural institutions (e.g. museums)
• Associations
• Support services

The aim of training in education science is to enable students to develop educationally engaged thinking, which is demonstrated in a research-oriented attitude:

• Reflection and analysis of structural contradictions in the field of educational practice
• Critical descriptive analysis of the interdependent conditions and influences of educational reality and its social-cultural framing
• Identification and reflection of (one’s own) educational spaces of action and barriers against the backdrop of cultural, habitual and biographical preconceptions
• Development of professionalism as a reflexive transformation of the relationship between the self, the world and others in the context of education
• Facilitating spaces for speaking and thinking for oneself or others