For the further internationalization of teacher training

After the Erfurt School of Education (ESE) won the University of Erfurt's first Internationalization Award in 2018, the commitment to expanding the range of study abroad programs in teacher training has continued to grow. On the basis of project ideas from various departments, ESE and the International Office of the University of Erfurt have developed "ELsA - Erfurt Teacher Training Students Abroad", a model project which the university is supporting with 66,000 euros of its own funds until 2022. Within the framework of the "Lehramt.International" program, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) is now providing additional funding for the "ELsA" project from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with more than a quarter of a million euros between 2021 and 2025.

The funding will now make it possible to finance a coordinating staff position on the one hand, and to implement further measures to promote the visibility of the topic, to establish new partnerships abroad and to consolidate existing cooperation, e.g. with the Università di Urbino (Italy), the University Łódź (Poland) and the University of Gothenburg (Sweden). "The renewed promotion of our project is a further form of recognition of previous efforts towards internationalization and a further step towards intensifying the cooperation between various departments of the university and the International Office and Erfurt School of Education," says Madlen Protzel of the Erfurt School of Education. "In this way, we can not only increase the visibility of the internationalization of teacher training through an institutionalized information and advisory service at our university, but also offer our students and lecturers the opportunity to expand their own competencies in the field of internationalization, which will not least benefit the students of tomorrow".