A Comparative Study of Teacher Education Programs in German and Korean Secondary School Teaching Training Institutions

This study aims to compare the current status of secondary school teacher education programs in German and Korean Universities and to draw implications for discussions on the operation and improvement of teacher education programs in Korea. To identify the current status of teacher education programs in Germany, we first selected one or two German universities that currently operate teacher education programs in each federal state, and then collected and analyzed information on teacher education programs posted on the official websites of each university. The focus of the analysis was on identifying the detailed operation status of the five components of the teacher education program, which are practice, pedagogy, and other areas, except for the major and teaching method. To identify the operation status of the Korean teacher education programs, we collected and analyzed the information on the teacher education programs posted on the official website of the College of Education at University A in Korea. This study then compared the detailed operation status of the German and Korean teacher education programs, focusing on practical, pedagogical, and other areas, and found that the proportion of practical areas in German teacher education programs is higher than in Korean teacher education programs, and that, unlike Korean teacher education programs, which have only practical courses in schools, German teacher education programs have practical courses in various education-related organization other than schools. Based on these differences, this study suggests three implications: increasing the proportion of practical courses in teacher education programs, introducing practical courses that take place in education-related organizations other than schools, and offering a variety of pedagogy-related elective courses at universities.